Travis Tucker – AS Media Studies Evaluation
For my media studies coursework I have attempted to complete Brief 1, tasks 2 and 3. It consisted of emulating magazine pages and creating at least 3 webpages. I chose brief 1 because it seemed exciting and not a lot of people were doing it. So I wanted to stand out a bit. I wanted to create a vampire series called Deadly Thirst. It would have been aired on BBC 3 and advertise on two BBC channels. To do this I have used Radiotimes as my magazine simply because it has over 1000 000 issues circulating around Britain. It has been published by the BBC since 1923. Radiotimes is a TV and radio listings magazine. It is the third in its magazine category behind ‘TV Choice’ and ‘What on TV’ because of the audience appeal, the other two magazines concentrate on TV soap operas and ‘Radiotimes’ operates on all types of television genres. The vampire series that I created would be a spin-off of the already popular BBC series ‘Being Human’ so using Radiotimes would be good for advertising fir the BBC as it would be a BBC original. For the website I was going to create I used the ‘Being Human’ webpage on the BBC website for ideas. I also watched the show on television and that gave me ideas what to write about in my print work.
The pages that I have emulated from Radiotimes I found it easy to spot the codes and conventions that the magazine had used on the pages. The colours that which were used mainly was green and blue, these colours can connote nature, so the work that I done showed a lot of nature connoting colours in the background to keep along the same lines. Throughout the whole magazine, bright, vivid colours were used, making the mood of the magazine seem quite light. Even though my series is more dark and sinister I had to use bright colours to represent the good side of it. With the layout I kept the same amount of text columns in my work to keep it as similar and real as possible. To create the print work, I used Microsoft publisher to template the pages. An A3 landscape template was used to get the double page spread to work and an A4 portrait template was used for the other page. In creating my website I used Wix, which is an online web designer. After numerous failed attempts on programs like Microsoft Publisher ad software like Dreamweaver, I just used an online designer as it is easier and much more efficient. The website is very easy to use as the colour contrast on the menu is good for people with visual impairment and even an unskilled computer user can access my website and understand how to navigate. The colours on the website are different to the colours used on the print based work. These colours are black, grey and red, each having its own ‘evil’ connotation. This shows the darker side through the colours used. The website consists of 4 pages, a home page, characters, feedback and a contact us page. Two pages are interactive to keep the viewer occupied. The feedback page has a box in which viewers of the show can send their thoughts on the night’s episode and the contact page has a Google maps box which the viewer can play around with. This allows audience interactivity which can bring the viewer back to the website.
The BBC owned Radio times for 88 years has the institutional values of the organisation even though it is now owned by a private company called Exponent. The other company that was involved in my Media creation was Primetime, in which-----
I aimed my series at middle class teenagers, I chose that audience because the BBC usually aim shows to that particular audience, for example ‘Live At The Apollo’ and ‘Have I got News For You’ and ‘Being Human’. These shows have some sort of comedy in them as well and that is why I chose my audience to be aimed at that class because my series would be clever and funny. I was also thinking about the uses and gratification theory whilst I was creating my website and print work. What I wrote about in my print was based on love, between two of the main characters, in real life and in the series, these appeals to women as it offers them escapism. This diversion in their lives makes them feel like they are a part of an exciting world and will always want to read magazines to stay there. There was less appeal to the men though, as it doesn’t represent any of the things that men like to read in magazines like desirable consumer items or idealised girlfriends, even though the love life of one of the stars is revealed it is not gritty enough to get male attention, also Radiotimes will not lower its standards to tabloid or come out of its genre of magazine for things like that. So for my print work it has really been aimed at the women of the market offering them diversion. At first sight my website has an eye capturing picture giving it a strong visual impact on the viewer, which can bring about diversion due to the eye candy available. It’s very easy to navigate around the site as there is a menu in clear view. The website which is darker then the print (colour wise, as it has red, grey and black house colours which connote different meanings), offers brief and minimum information about the characters of the show but it offers enough I think for the audience to have a certain relationship with the character. (i.e. enough to go to a friend and tell them what happened) The website is aimed at everyone, as it is easy to navigate and use.
The way the print text represent the series is the opposite of what it should be. As the storyline is dark it should have dark colours similar to the house colours on the magazine. But as the Radiotimes uses bright colours throughout most of the magazine and because of some of the colours and what was in the picture made me use bright colours. So now it doesn’t really look like a scary series but more like a romance series. If I had not of stuck so closely to the page that I used and just took something similar to it but in a different background doing the same thing it could have been better. The characters that were used can also represent a middle class background, in which viewers can relate to, as they dress and look like middle class teenagers.
The talisman that is shown on the ‘Home’ we page has symbols on it that have cultural meanings, representing health and knowledge. As it is included in the storyline as a major part, it is represented an artefact that will cause the destruction of the human race, the evil can be connoted through the snakes on the spine, as snakes connote evil.
Before the creation of my website I was planning to create a short trailer for my task instead. Items from that have been included as it didn’t go the way I wanted it to die to time. I think I have completed the task that was given to me but if I was allowed more time to think about what I was doing, I would have created much better pieces of work. If I were to create a broadcast text, it would be a TV trailer for BBC1 and BBC3. It would be promoted on BBC3 as well, because it is aimed at a young audience. The trailer would be short but very eye catching, with lots of quick cuts. It would tease the audience to want to see more.