2. How Does Your Music Magazine Represent Particular Social Groups?

How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?

In my product I tried to make my social group that I represented appeal to my genre audience. As I chose for my music magazine to be a hip-hop/RnB magazine I tried to make my models look more like ‘blingers’. ‘Blingers’ are a social group that listen to hip-hop/RnB music and like expensive clothing and jewellery, ‘bling’. By creating a girly mise en scene to my images this created a fantasy like theme which is seen in other hip-hop/RnB music magazines such as ‘vibe’, also by using the props of lollipops, fluffy pillows and dresses further created my mise en scene. I based this on the front cover of ‘vibe’ magazine with the artist Nicki Minaj on the cover with an animated background and a fantasy feel.

By dressing my models in short, tight dresses I made them represent ‘blingers’ by looking at my research of ‘vibe’ magazine I could see that the female artists featured on the pages were showing a lot of skin from their costumes, mainly their legs, therefore I decided to show this in my products to show the same sex appeal as in my researched music magazines.

I used a bright lighting in the studio to make the images bright and the background a plain white, I done this to make the colours stand out more and to also make the images look ‘glossy’ this was to represent how ‘blingers’ are seen in actual hip-hop/RnB music magazines. By using the studio, I was able to create my desired light effect, I researched into some ‘vibe’ magazine images from shoots from the animated type article from the cover and this helped me to decide on the lighting I wanted and that I wanted to use a studio to achieve more ‘glossy’ looking images seen in hip-hop/RnB music magazines.

I used quite simplistic language throughout my product as it related to the research I had done on ‘vibe’, they base their product on the main image and less writing. I also made my language very straight to the point not to confuse my audience in any way.

I made my models relax in their photo shoot to make their expressions slightly more natural than the ones seen in ‘vibe’, however I still based my images on the poses and expressions seen in ‘vibe’ just less forced. I used girly, genuine poses and body languages but including the sex appeal and the fun theme that I decided to use through my research.

In my image used for my double page spread there is slight attitude present in the model on the lefts face, this is seen a lot in hip-hop/RnB music magazines such as ‘vibe’. I think it’s an important part of the representation of the ‘blingers’ as a social group as they are seen to have an attitude in images of them.