In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)

It was quite hard to find a double page spread of Billboard magazine, I think that this was because it is an American brand and the people there rarely put up feature articles online. I then had to opt for other music magazines. I looked at some feature article in NME and found some of them to look really good while others looked a bit messy and not as appealing to the idea. I then stumbled across a Q double page spread of Lady Gaga. I liked the idea of having one big picture on the left hand side and the other to be filled with text and therefore followed that convention.

1. Image: The reason why I decided to have a black and white image is because of a quote I read online which said that in a coloured image, you focus on the clothes ect and the mise en scene in general, but in a black and white image, you see emotion. Although she is not looking at the camera, the high angle shot gives off an intimate feeling between her and music, and therefore the use of a black and white image is effective in that sense. I chose to have a violin and music sheets in the mise en scene because it suggested a more musical vibe to it rather than the image of Lady Gaga in Q. I wanted their to be a focus on the music in the image rather than the model because I wanted to represent young women as hard working rather than the way that they represented Lady Gaga. I used a high angle shot  because it challenged the common conventions of  close ups or long shots in double page spreads that you see in magazine, such as the above of Q.

2. Image #2: I thought it would be interesting if I had a cinema strip of images on the side because you could  see the personality of the model and that would make the reader warm to her and perhaps want to read the interview to see what she is really like.

3. "The Making of Ava: I Haven't Made It Yet": I didn't realise this before, but on the front cover and contents page, the title of this article is "The Making of Ava" and the puff taken out of the body text is "I haven't made it yet." I therefore unintentionally added continuity through the three pages.

4. Body Text: I was originally going to have the body set out more like a story rather than an interview because I think having questions and then answers makes it look uncomfortable in my opinion because not all the questions are in line with the text underneath it. Due to that, I think it is probably the weakest point out of all three pages. 

5. The last line: A convention that is commonly used to show the reader that the article is finished is by either  having a ‘by-line’  or promote the interviewee, I have chosen the latter option and decide to promote her.