How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My site involves the association with music, which a lot of people would say that its hype is limited to the youth population, however music is one of the most popular aspects of life that we can all share no matter how old/how much money someone has - the majority of people still find the joy in listening/performing to it. That is why I felt that using music helps to connect the world and see it as a more global involvement rather than a single social group. Incorporating social networking sites is allowing different age groups to be involved with this type of thing, attracting the younger audience is important as these are the highest population that are more likely to stumble across the charity/website in the first place. Even if people are not interested in the fund-raising that it promotes; individuals do not have to conform to the ideas of the charity to still be able to donate to it. 
I kept the language on the site quite informal, however the important facts were proposed accordingly. This is to keep the seriousness of the sites aims for the charity and I would not have wanted to stray away from that.  
The colours I have used are fairly sophisticated, for the people who prefer visual layouts - I have included a variety of pictures. But my main aim was to keep it simple, so it is more likely to attract those individuals who prefer "easier to read" websites. It's straight to the point, rather than making it too complicated than it should be. I liked the idea of the live twitter feed as it is relevant to the population of people who closely follow media in this way. It is giving different options of following the progress of the charity.

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

My aim for this project was to produce a website that would be able to stand strong in comparison to real life websites on the internet, by fitting in with the general conventions. By using iWeb, I wasn't fully able to create the ideal detail of websites, that the majority of popular websites use, however it was simple and easy to lay out from the ideas I had. It's particularly useful if you have a clear idea about how you want your site to look visually, as the placement of items is relatively simple to match you initial ideas. (Rather than having to use complicated HTML, Javascript with programs like Dreamweaver). I was still able to incorporate html snippets into my website in a simpler form.
Overall my website did manage to look professional and easy to navigate around if I was to compare it with general websites. It was not as technically advanced as most but the basics are there for it to perform well.
From my previous website research I tried to incorporate the main conventions on websites currently by having a unique logo, pictures, news pages, twitter feeds/live feeds of some kind, links to social networking sites (i.e: facebook) as these sites are the most popular way of communication, by linking these you are creating more awareness of the site and will also allow more people to be interested if it is associated with a popular site. I personally found the sites which were plainer to be more appealing, so I kept my colours to a minimum and tried not to overcrowd the components. For charity sites, most had donation buttons clearly visible, to catch the eye of the visitor and I included a link on the sidebar so it was there every page. I didn't use pictures of the 'poverty' that most sites would use to draw people in, but although that may have been hard to achieve - I decided to try and connect 'music' with the charity to hopefully allow more people to pay attention.
Most layouts on the websites I looked at are rather wide and can sometimes be complicated to look at and I decided that I wanted the main body of my website to not be that wide. I liked how much more simple and neater it looks by being smaller. I think it stands out from the other websites as it's not fitting in with the general layout conventions.

Audio-Visual planning

I would like a video on my website which will reflect on the prospects of the website. Ideally I would have liked to take a video of one of the charity gigs in itself, but I think that would be too difficult to organise. Footage of the poverty we would be supporting would also be too tricky, so I am going to recreate some interviews of the artists who are volunteering to help and perhaps show some previews of their songs/work.

storyboard for video










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screenshots of 4 pages