Presentation1

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Introduction

Clothing• I dressed model in mainly black clothing as black clothing is very popular

in the hip-hop genre as this portrays the mysterious nature of the music genre. This is very similar to the Arise magazine where the model Tyra Banks is wearing a black dress and also quite similar to Vibe magazine where the model Keri Hilson is also wearing a black body suit.

• I decided to add a stylish black hat to my model in order to make her look classier; however this differed from Vibe magazine image where the model is wearing a boat hat. I dressed my model in a black leather jacket and a white top which revealed a little bit of cleavage in order to make her look attractive and sexy. Furthermore, I also dressed my model in black leggings which is commonly worn by many people who are interested in hip-hop. There is a lot of movement involved in hip-hop therefore the leggings allows people to flexibly move and this is why I have made my model wear this.

Hair

• Hair is quite an important feature in magazine images as this represents the social group who are interested in the magazine. In my magazine, I kept the hair style of my model plain only using a middle parting to reveal the sides of her hair because most hip hop related men like myself are often attracted to women with this hair style. This is quite similar to the Vibe magazine image where the model also has a middle parting and the hat covers most of her hair which is the similar to my own model. Furthermore, I also added some brown highlights in my model’s hair in order to possibly make her look more attractive to customers who are going to be buying my magazine.

Gesture When taking the picture for my magazine front cover I made sure that my

model’s hands were kept busy as this would make the image stronger and less dull. Therefore, I asked my model to place her hands on her knees as this is quite a strong position and also reveals the jewelleries which she is wearing on her wrists. I feel that posture represents particularly hip-hop social groups because people who live by the hip-hop lifestyle often enjoy showing off their expensive jewelleries therefore I feel that the customers could relate to this.

Gaze/Posture

I made sure that my model had a concentrated gaze which made it seem like my model was directing staring at the customers. This was similar to the Arise magazine image where the model also had a concentrated gaze which made the model look more attractive and appealing to the customer and this was what I was trying to portray with my model.

The lighting After taking the picture for my magazine front cover, I found that the

lighting was quite low in the picture. Therefore I added some artificial light in order to boost the contrast of the image. Changing the lighting of the image also helped to boost the quality of image making it clearer for the customers. This differed from the Arise magazine and also the Q magazine where the lighting was quite low in order to perhaps portray the dark and mysterious nature of the image. Similarly, just like my magazine front cover image, Arise magazine used artificial light in order to add the effectiveness of the image. However, this often comes with a cost as the customers will be drawn to the background and the lighting of the image rather than the image itself and this is why I didn’t use dark lightings.

Shot type and angle Most hip-hop magazines often use mid-shot images in their front cover

however, I have used a full shot on my front cover image because I wanted to reveal all the clothing and accessories which my model was wearing including her shoes. This was quite similar to Q magazine where they have also used a full shot on the model in order to reveal her full outfit even though the model isn’t wearing a top. However, the Q magazine image was taken from a rightwards angle whereas I decided to take my image from a straight angle in order to get all the clothing and accessories of my model from the level.