Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I wanted to use existing conventions of newspapers so that it was recognisable to my audience as a local newspaper, some of the conventions i used was:

Masthead - My title 'Island Eye' ran along the top like most local newspapers
Date/price/website/ - normal conventions that need to be on a newspaper
Articles with supporting images - Most local papers use images to enhance the stories etc.

I wanted to write in a similar style to normal newspaper articles, i therefore looked at various examples of existing newspapers such as 'The Isle of Wight County Press' and copied their style of writing, i also used it to find good topics for stories for me to cover.



I also created my paper for a specific target market (teenagers) therefore in the same way that the county press aim their adverts more to the elderly, i aimed mine at teenagers advertising for things such as driving instructors and pizza hut etc.



However. In order for my paper to stand out and be different to most local newspapers i needed to challenge the usual conventions and produce something different.

I decided to use a colour scheme of blue. This isn't a common thing in newspapers, apart from in logo's. I chose blue as it is a colour which appeals to both boys and girls and also represents the sea - one of the great assets of the Isle of Wight. I used the colour scheme in my title, logo, contents and also kept the theme on the second page by having a band of blue across the top.

In my research i didn't come across any local newspapers which are aimed at teenagers. This alone is therefore challenging conventions. I made sure i made my target market clear by using teenage models in my poster and teenagers actors to do the voices in my radio ad.

here are some of the teenagers i used:

Final Pieces

Here is my final Front cover, 1st page of my newspaper and poster for my newspaper:





here is my radio ad:

Radio Advert

I have now recorded my radio advert but can't find a way of getting it onto here at the moment.

I chose 3 A level drama students to do the voices for my advert so that they could get the right type of expressions i was looking for.

I wanted to use boys and girls to show that my newspaper is aimed at both and made sure they were of the same age as my target market.

After a couple of practices we decided that the advert was too long so we shortened the dialogue and made it faster. My peers also liked the music at the end but felt there should be some at the beginning so we did that. This shows the importance of audience feedback when making my radio ad.

Photo Editing

Here is an example of how i edited a photo to make it look clearer and better quality.

This is the original:


and this is the edited version:


i cropped it so that it would fit better on my newspaper page and i also enhanced the colours to make it brighter and clearer.

Annotated second page

Here is a copy of my final page 2. It is also annotated to show why i did certain things.

Annotated title page

Here is a copy of my final title page for my newspaper with annotations to explain why i have done what i've done.

Audience feedback on poster

As with the radio advert, i had different ideas to choose from and i wanted my target markets input as to which i should use as my final poster.
Here is the sheet i gave them:



3 people liked number 1, 8 people liked number 2 and 4 people liked number 3. I will therefore be using number 2 as my final poster