Statement of Intent
How do you intend to use the four areas of the media theoretical framework to communicate meaning and meet the requirements of your chosen brief? (approx. 400 words)
Product 1: Magazine
I intend to create a conventional entertainment magazine aimed at a fun-loving audience of 16-25-year olds. Through my research into entertainment magazines I found that conventional front covers included a bright and impactful colour scheme, a large masthead in bold fonts and a busy atmosphere created most oftenly by a heavy amount of copy. I have tried to incorporate these conventions into my own magazines, including a bold capitalised masthead ‘SPOTLIGHT’, with many cover lines both in my front covers and contents pages to portray a busy representation, and also used colour schemes such as bright pink and yellow. These colours would appeal to my targeted ‘fun-loving’ audience, hopefully catching their attention at first glance, and a busy copy would satisfy a 16-25-year old’s need for the gratification of surveillance, loving gossip and wanting to know what is going on in the world. My magazine has been named ‘Spotlight’ in order to denote spotlights used in performances of any sort, immediately connoting to the audience that the magazine revolves around the topic of entertainment and production, also inferring that there is the other perspective of behind the scenes content. The word ‘spotlight’ is used to describe the main focus on stage, also therefore portraying the audience, as fun-loving young people will be confident and expressionistic, and wanting to be in the spotlight. My research into the magazine industry showed that the most impactful front covers feature one main individual as a relationship can be formed between the star and the reader.
Through my research into Hearst Magazines, I found that their main branding message was that they wanted to produce magazines “with an overarching purpose: to help people get more out of life” and stated “positivity is at the heart of everything (they) do”. I tried to incorporate this key message into all the content I chose to include across my platforms, such as building confidence, optimistic interviews from people in the entertainment industry and celebrating success, in order to maintain a sense of brand identity, providing an honest and authentic brand for the audience and therefore further brand loyalty.
In order to appeal to a mass market demographic, I have ensured that there is a mixture of content for both participatory, active audiences and also more passive, (e.g secondary) audiences. Interactivity-provoking content such as competitions (e.g creating a behind the scenes video, winning a BBC production tour e.t.c) or events for audiences to attend (e.g TheatreCraft) will encourage audiences to take an active role when consuming the product when reading both the print or online versions and switching between the two. However, some audiences might consume Spotlight magazine to seek diversion and escapism, therefore taking a more passive approach to consumption such as skimming through the highlights and main pages. Blumler and Katz’ audience gratification theory supports the concept that different audiences seek different gratifications when consuming the same media. For example, mental wellbeing content such as a personal, heartfelt interview from Mia Ward may appeal to a professional dancer in order to improve their pre-competition motivation, but will also appeal to a beginner actor in order to overcome their new performance anxiety. Another example is that celebrity news may appeal to someone who seeks a sense of escapism from a stressful daily life, whereas a student might use this news to widen their cultural competence or use extra-curricular knowledge in their essays at school. I have used my focus group during my audience research to represent this. Hall’s Reception Theory supports this varied audience reaction.
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