P3 #6- Questionnaire Evaluation

My questionnaire had a total of ten questions and I received a total twenty responses, with 95% totally completed. I believe this is because all my questions were closed, meaning it did not take too much thinking, nor effort to finish the questions. Even though I used closed questions, I did insert comment boxes on a few questions to allow users to input some more specific answers. These types of answers can help much more than simply a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. For example, question #9 asked whether the person answering uses social media. I inserted a comment box under this one as just knowing if they use social media hardly helps me. However, if they tell me what social media they use, I then know which ones are most popular, which can help when marketing.

One question that ensured me that the topic of my article was suitable was question #4. This question asked the user whether they know who their local football club is. An overwhelming majority of 14 (out of 19) answered ‘No’, telling me that they did not know who their local team is. Inside the comment box, people had written things such as “I haven’t been told”, “Not advertised”. Someone even stated that they’d “Never heard anyone talk about it”. This tells me that my magazine and article will be informative to the local community, as it seems like they are not being encouraged to find out or get involved with Grassroots or any local football club in their area. 

Within my article, I will write about how social media could help local football clubs increase the crowds they receive at each game. I believe this is a suitable point to make as question #9 revealed that 95% of the people who answered use social media, with Twitter and Instagram being the most popular, being mentioned five times and eight times respectively. As this is such a majority, it would make sense to mention social media in my article.  

 

One significant question was #8. This asked users whether they would be interested in a local football magazine (the product I have proposed). This was important because the answers would tell me whether there’s a place for my idea or not. Out of 20 people, 50% said they were open to the idea (with 20% of people saying ‘Yes’ and 30% of people saying ‘Maybe’), outweighing the 35% that said they were not interested. The rest of the people (15%) said they were ‘Unsure’, meaning there is still an audience that can be won over. These results show that there is a place for my magazine, meaning I should go ahead with my original idea and produce this media product.

P3 #5- Recces of Locations

The Park

This is a great location for taking pictures for my magazine as it has a large field area. This large area allows me to get a range of shots from different angles and distances, giving me a wide range of choice. The location is quite safe, with very little objects to hurt yourself on and with the areas weather not being especially bad. The park is rarely busy either, lessening the chance of people being there during the shoot. This prevents people getting in the shots by accident which means I don’t have to waste as much time taking the same photos all over again. The field within the park is a good location because it resembles a place in which local football teams may play their matches. This relates to the theme of the magazine and the article.

The School Field

This is a great location for taking pictures for my magazine as it has a large field area. This large area allows me to get a range of shots from different angles and distances, giving me a wide range of choice. The location is quite safe, with very little objects to hurt yourself on and with the areas weather not being especially bad. The only drawback to the school field is that it is not uncommon for students to be on there. This means they could be in risk of being in any shots I take. This may mean I have to retake photographs. A good thing about the school field is that it has goals set up, meaning I can incorporate them in my shots. This relates to the theme of the magazine and the article.

 

P3 #4- Risk Assessment

P3 #3- Gantt Chart

P3 #2- Mood Board

The main theme of my mood board is football but it is not the only theme visible. I have also made sure to show links to the required theme of community and to the format of my media product (a magazine).

I have included pictures of football pitches and crowds to represent the topic of the article which will be related to whether people still come and support their local team. Many of the fields in the pictures are empty because I plan on having the bias towards the idea that people do not come to watch their local team play.

I have also placed images of magazines that I would consider as my toughest competition and they are what I plan to base my own magazine layout on. This is because they use effective conventions such as splashes and common ones such as a masthead.

I made sure to include images that relate to the theme of community. For example, I have used a picture of the local train station to make sure I do not forget to relate my article and magazine to the local area. It is important to do this because without the local theme, I am not utilising the unique selling point of my idea.



P2, P3 #1 & M1- Presentation

P2 & M1 from Matthew Kimmins

Notes for slide 2- I will discuss whether people are still attending training sessions or going to support the team at matches from people who live in the area, discovering if the club has had support recently (such as over the past few years) or if the local community are just not turning up. If the latter is the case, then during my interview, I will ask for my interviewee to share their opinion on why support may be decreasing/lacking and enquire about whether the team has ever received support from those who live in the surrounding areas.

Notes for slide 3- To promote my magazine, I could use social media as our target age group (8-40) are known to be at ranging levels of activity on social media. The younger side of this being very active and the older side known to be quite active, but not to the same level. Another reason why I would be using social media is because it’s free, meaning even if it wasn’t effective it wouldn’t harm our budget. Accounts could be set up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat to countdown to the release of the magazine to create hype around it. Facebook will be used as the average use age in the UK is 18-34 years old (source- http://smallbusiness.chron.com/breakdown-facebook-users-age-63280.html), this is a large percentage of my target audience so I could find a considerable amount of viewers on this website. The reason around using Twitter is that it’s great for keeping people with short, quick updates on production and release date, or any other information surrounding the documentary. Instagram could also be used to quickly update my potential audience with images from my magazine. All three of these accounts could then all promote the snapchat account which would update potential viewers on a more frequent and personal level. Using social media would help us reach a much wider target audience than anything else as it’s available to anyone with an internet connection.


Another way I could promote the documentary is by purchasing an advertising block in a local newspaper. This would gather the attention of the local audience at a fairly cheap price. Even though this would not get in touch with as wide an audience as the internet can provide, the audience it will reach is the one that the league the “Lydiate Lynx” are in. This makes it more personal to these people than it would if the marketing was directed to anyone around the world. However, this would not attract as large of an audience. Another problem is that as it’s a newspaper, the advert will only be shown in pictures and words, which is not as interesting as video.

Notes for slide 6- My double page spread will include the article on one of the pages, with an image on the other, this is to make the magazine more interesting as just text could potentially be boring and is to make the the magazine more aesthetically pleasing.

P1- Proposal

Format: Magazine I am going to create a Magazine to challenge whether Grassroots football is still relevant to those in the community, finding out if people still attend training sessions and whether the teams get any support from those who live in the area.

Working Title: Off The Bar The title will have a bold and simple design (most likely white with a black boarder) as I hope the simplicity will add professionalism to the design. My slug will be "Off The Bar" as it is a commonly used term used in football (the subject of the magazine), often used in exciting circumstances (connotes fun and excitement). This will be the masthead on the front cover.

Genre: Grassroots Football It adds more of a personal feel to football magazines as it focuses on the local area rather than the national and sometimes global scale that competition such as Match of the Day Magazine or FourFourTwo provide. Grassroots meets the requirement of community as the programme is all about getting more people involved in sport, more specifically football. I will be focusing on local football, allowing me to ask people that I know about the subject and relate it to the community around myself.

Content: My magazine will have an article based upon an interview with someone that has spent a long time being involved with local, Grassroots football. The interview will most likely be the body copy of the article. Alongside the article, I will have an image/images that are relevant to the content of the article. This is so the image doesn’t look out of place. The main body of the article will be placed on the right hand side of the double page spread. To draw the reader into the article, I will use a pull quote of something that has been said in the interview in order to give them an idea of what the interview and the article may be like. To use this effectively, the pull quote will be one of the potentially most entertaining parts of the interview.

Style or Approach: The main colour of the magazines front cover will be green, as I plan on having an image of a football pitch, to imply to the reader that it is a football magazine upon their first look. The colour green connotes nature, this implies going outside and being active, which is recently become a concern of parents, that their children are not going outside ad being active enough. This could encourage sales of the magazine as parents believe it could spark an interest in exercise, and more specifically football. I will be using Photoshop to create my magazines aesthetic as I believe it’s the most suitable software for the job. This is because of the simple layer and free transform features that will allow me to position the components of each page to where I want them to be. Photoshop will also allow me to add effects that add to the aesthetic of the magazine.

Audience: My magazine is targeted at any age, but more specifically millennials. The gender of my main target audience will be men as within the proximity of the location the magazine will be released in, mostly men play local football, with female teams being quite rare in the area. No ethnicities will be chosen specifically as the article should be trying to promote inclusion. The magazine will be fairly cheap so that the spending power of the audience is not too much of a worry. The area in which it will be released (Maghull/Lydiate), this is a mostly rural that has a fairly average incomes throughout (excluding those that earn under and over the average, as these people obviously exist).

Length: I intend to create a front cover and a double paged spread. It will be A4 in size as this is most common in magazines and will contain an article of around 600 words. The article will not be too long and most likely consist of small paragraphs as the way news is consumed has changed as we have become more technological, meaning quicker, easier to read/scan through articles are more appealing.

Frequency: My magazine will be a one-time release as it will motivate me to create the highest quality of magazine possible, as there is only one issue to prove that I can create a magazine on this subject and of a real quality.