1. Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
2. My Target Audience My target audience were ‘Indie kids’, male and female and aged between 15-19. Here are a few defininations of Indie kids that I have found: Indie kids are witty, intelligent kids that wear vintage clothing and like to differ from the norm. Indie-kid is slang for a person who is keen on 'Indie' music and wears it's fashions. Indie is short for independent rock. In terms of music it would be independent of major labels/mainstream stuff
3. A Typical Indie Boy Indie Boys tend to be skinny, shy, with messy hair and a fringe. The hair must not be confused with emo hair. Indie footwear is often converses or plimsolls.
4. A Typical Indie Girl Indie girls wear any sort of jeans, comfy and casual t-shirts and the same footwear as the boys.
5. Outfits These are the outfit I made for my blog of what a indie girl would wear. However as mentioned in my blog polyvore don’t do male clothing.
6. My Front Cover As the front cover is the first part that my audience will see, I wanted my audience to instantly connect and relate to my model. To attract indie members I dressed my model in the clothes that they are familiar with. This being a check shirt buttoned to the top with a beanie hat as well as an artist who is of my target audiences age. As indie kids are all about the music I also got my model to wear headphones. The facial expression was the main part of my front cover, with the model showing confidence and acting as an individual, I thought that my audience would appreciate this more.
7. My Contents Page My contents page doesn’t particularly represent my chosen social group. However there are a few points to which the indie kids could relate to. The first being the feature band ‘You Me At Six’ as they are well known and famous I would hope that my target audience know them or at least recognise the band member who is the photograph. The second is the ‘Win Gig Tickets’ this should instantly grab their attention because indie kids love going to music festivals.
8. My Double Page Spread Although there is no mise-en-scene that my social group can relate to, the main focus again, just like my front cover is my model and the use of clothing. Again he is wearing a beanie hat as well as being in a different check shirt and you can see that he wear jeans. The way he is posed shows that he is sensitive but also open and vulnerable at the same time, this reflects his age which my target audience can relate too. I also included an image of a girl although she doesn’t look indie, she is half hiding behind her coat this shows that she is slightly shy.
9. Overall Overall my product does not offer challenge but supports dominant ideas about my chosen social group, indie. I haven’t done anything different to other representations from within my magazine’s genre. However I think I could have improved my media product to represent my chosen social group by using mise-en-scene that communicates to indie kids.
