Music video attempt one.

In our last media lesson we were given the task to create a music video. Our teacher arranged the groups that we worked in and also gave us each a different song. We had the song by Maria Carey "Without You". From the start we listed to the song on the laptop and discussed what would work and what wouldnt in terms of the song's pace. As it is very slow we had to match that with the filming.

We wanted to film a scene where someone was leaving, so we used the park as the location and planned to have some editing effects of "disappearing" - by filming something there, then film the same thing in the exact same place where it is not there, and fade the clips together.

We had a lot of problems with getting the filming of the singing parts as the memeber had said they would do, day after day we still had no filming done. We were promised lots of filming, with different locations and camera angles however what we eventually got was a single continuous shot. To make things worse the lip syncing was extremely hard as I could not see what she was miming so matching it to the song was mostly done on guess work. Due to this problem it made extremely hard for me and the other member of the group to edit, we had to scrap most of the video as it was impossible to work with and also it would just look messy.

Due to not having the film until the last minute myself and the other member were rushed for time to complete this production to which we made clear and unnecessary errors, including spelling mistakes in the Title and credits and the difference in fonts.The end result turned out to be dreadful.

We managed to edit about 1 minute 40, the video is 2 minutes long including credits. Although this turned out to be a disaster, I did learn that you have to have trust in who you work with. Even when they choose to take the lead in offering to act. The second thing I learnt was that you cannot rush your work, when you rush you make silly errors.

Evaluation

Overall i think that our video turned out well, i was impressed with the final piece. We tried to follow our initial ideas, but some parts couldnt really be filmed so we had to change them so that the video was appropriate to the task we were given. I think the only improvements that could be made was changing the location, so that the mise en scene matched the video however this didnt pose as much of a problem in the final outcome.

I think i`ve learnt alot about editing in this task, the use of trial and error and getting used to what you can do with editing has helped and been a very good learning process and i now feel that the next time i do a similar task i will be able to remember and continue to use the skills i`ve learnt this time. I`ve worked on checking the mise en scene of the shot before filming and checking for any unwanted sounds or objects that would be included in the shot.

Final editing of PSA

On Wednesdays lesson we finished the editing of our PSA, we added in the last parts of the film which included the statistics and facts about rape. After everything was finished we imported our video into idvd and chose our theme that we wanted at the start of the movie, all this gave our PSA a more professional look. We had a few problems with importing the movie as it wouldnt work but eventually it got sorted and we could burn our movie onto the disk.

We watched everyone elses films and each one was different and very good. And i learnt how editing has a huge effect on the outcome of a film, even the shots which carry one shot to the next can be edited to look included in the film. Also if during the filming there is something in the shot that isnt suppost to be there or something goes wrong it can usually be fixed with the use of editing.

Editing PSA

In todays lesson we were given the hour to edit our PSA`s which we filmed on mondays lesson. The editing gives us the chance to make all the shots run smoothly and gives the whole film a more profession look.
We were given a camera and a mac to do this. After we had imported our shots and had it loaded onto the mac we could start editing them in Imovie again. At first we found the editing a bit difficult because we had forgotten how, but after a few attempts and trial and error we picked it up again. We got most of the editing finished, all our shots done and at the right time length, cut out the bits we didnt want, and shortened a few of them, silenced one of the shots because of some background noise that we were unable to cut out due to it being in the middle of the shot, added in a fade in at the begining and the end and started the last shot which was the black screen with statistics on which we will need to finish on wednesdays lesson and possibly add in credits to the end of the PSA.

Rape Awareness

On Mondays lesson we started to film our Rape Awareness PSA in our groups. Our filming went well, we managed to get all of our shots done in the hour we were given. We had to check for any unwanted items or noises in our shots, this turned out well due to rewinding and playing the shots back to check if we needed to shoot them again, which in most cases we didn`t.
The ideas we had for our PSA were good and we all seemed to think of the same things in our group when we were creating our storyboard. When we were filming we used our storyboard as a guideline but realised some of the ideas we had wouldn`t have worked and it wouldn`t have looked right some of the shots had to be changed as we went along. This allows you to find out what works and what doesn`t and how sometimes yor intial plan doesn`t always work.

Research

Today we were given the task to research Rape awareness and the different types of public service announcement that are shown. I started off by searching public service announcements online using youtube hoping that i would get a few ideas which i could use in our own one which we will be creating.

A lot of the Public Service announcement videos use celebrities or well known people to get the point across that these things can happen to anyone, like these ones each one respresenting a different topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg8QL9pOZe4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWNJ1YNhgA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LsuJi33B2U
All the public service announcements focus on the hard facts and statitics along with the negative sides, which are effective because it gets the message across to people and makes them aware of whats going on.

Typing into google Rape awareness brought up this website http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/75280BA071FB5F9C802572D6004D3EB6.htm
which included facts and videos that were used as adverts to get the point across about rape and how it can happen to anyone and not to think that it wouldn`t happen to you.

Police recorded 53,540 sexual offences in England and Wales in the year ending March 2008. This represented a 7% drop over 2006-07 figures.
In 2007, there were 248,300 victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.
Approximately 2/3 of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim.173% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger.138% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.128% are an intimate.17% are a relative.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hors237.pdf
The 2000 British Crime Survey (BCS) was conducted in the first half of 2000, with the
majority of interviews taking place between January and April. Respondents were asked if
they had experienced an incident of sexual victimisation since age 16 and also ‘in the last
12 months’ (preceding the date of the interview).
• 0.9 per cent of women aged 16 to 59 said they had been subject to some form
of sexual victimisation (including rape) during the last year.
• 0.4 per cent of women said they had been raped in this period.
• In the year preceding the 2000 BCS it is estimated that 61,000 women were the
victim of a rape in England and Wales.

Filming and editing

We were set the task of creating a short film about a phonecall. We had to do a storyboard for this so that when we started to film we knew what we were doing, there had to be 16 shots all planned out. Unfortantly i missed this lesson so had to catch up on what was happening in the next lesson. We then started filming in the first setting which was on the storyboard, and found someone that agreed to be filmed. We did this for the first hour and finished all our shots within it. The things that i learnt were how the different shots and camera angles are needed to get what your trying to achieve across to your audience. Also how the length of shots are important whilst filming. We had the examples of what we needed to improve on from filming last time so we knew what we had to work on.
In the second hour we uploaded our short film onto the Macs and began to edit the shots into one short film. It took our group a little longer to understand using it but after a few attempts and being shown what we needed to do to cut a shot we got the hang of it.
Unfortunately, technology didn't seem to like our group and we had a few problems, resulting in us loosing the editing we had already done in IMovie, but we contiuned it during the free lessons we had.
The next lesson was just finishing the editing of our short film and adding in titles and credits in which was more simple than i thought it would be after getting the hang of the editing the first time round, finishing it didnt take to long and we experimented in the titles and credits at the beginning and end of the film. After all the groups had finished their editing we all watched eachothers short films and made comments of the strengths and what could have been improved but each groups were good and gave us ideas on how being given the same task can turn out differently in the different groups.

A2 Media

This year we have been given the task of creating either and music video, a film trailer or a short film. After completing a short film of a tour of the school some skills and improvements need to be developed. These were; keeping the camera still at all times whilst filming, thinking about what is included in the shot, framing the shots and the length of them making them shorter would improve the length of the film in total. Also thinking about the use of sound and voice over when necessary, also how the sounds that are picked up which you may not want in the shot.

At the start of this project i think that im at a level 2, however by the end of the project i aim to be at a level 4, in order to acheive this i will need to develop the skills needed to do this.

Conclusion

In conclusion i am happy with the way in which my media portfolio turned out. I wouldn`t change much about my work. I feel that the amount of effort and time i put into creating it paid off and is shown through the work. The task has developed my knowledge of the technology used in the process of constructing the magazine, i`ve learnt a lot and gained a lot of skills throughout this project. Also i`ve dealt with a lot of problems along the way and over come them and carried on. I think that the process and outcome that we were told to think about at the start of the project worked, with the process being the place for trial and error shown in the preliminary task, and the things that i learnt and were unhappy with were developed and the skills acquired in the process were shown in the outcome of my main task.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In this slide is what ive learnt in the progression of the task from the contents page of my preliminary task to the contents page of my final task.
The fact that when i started the preliminary task i had hardly any knowlegde and understanding of how to use photshop shows, with the images not being edited apart from adjusting the colour slightly. I feel that the things that i was unhappy with which were how the page looked empty and the house style where the logo and title were placed on the front wasnt continued onto the contents page, made it look unprofessional and not much like a magazine. All these were corrected and shown in my final task, along with the things i had learnt from using photoshop which were all put it into the process of making my final task more appealing and attracting to the target audience.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In this slide is what I`ve learnt in the progression of the task from my preliminary task to my main task.
Looking back at my preliminary task i think that it shows the lack of knowledge i had for photo shop in the beginning due to not having a background and it looking plain, the lack of editing to the photos that could have been done to the images used, the only thing that i had discovered how to do in the preliminary task was to add the border. Whereas in my main task there is alot of things that i`ve learnt and used in the construction of the cover which are shown. Such as the way it is presented is more attracting to the target audience, the use of editing and cutting of images, and how the way the text and headlines are presented makes it more appealing. Also in the progression of the task I`ve learnt about the use of planning, research and time management, how much of an important role it plays in the construction of the main task. With the preliminary task there wasn`t as much planning involved as there was in the main task, i think that if there would have been more the outcome would have been a bit better.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Continuing with what i have learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product. This slide is focused on the blog and the use of blogger.com. Before starting this task i didn't really have a idea of what a blog actually was i had visited them online but never really knew how to create one or what you did with it. So this process of the task was all new to me, on this slide is how my blog is presented. It took me a while to set up my blog in the first place and started as a basic blog with little information and lack of detail due to not really knowing what to do the most exciting thing i could add was the use of a hyperlink that my post my relating to, this is shown in the first post i did.
As i became more used to blogging and understanding it a bit more i gradually started posting more detailed and longer posts, then i discovered how to add pictures and that helped the appearance of my blog and made it look more detailed and explained my ideas and plans of what i wanted to do with giving evidence to my main task. Then i was able to add to the layout of my blog and added a links list of all the websites i had used, and when we made a to do list of what we needed to include and what was left to do i added it to my blog to make it easier to see what i had left to do and what i had completed.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In this slide is what i`ve learnt about the technologies used in the process of constructing this product.
This slide is focusing on the use of photo shop and editing photos. Also the comparison of how i`ve made progress and used more of a variety of tools to construct the product.
Before we started this task i had only used photo shop once or twice but for nothing in depth like this so i had no real idea of what i was doing. Doing this task helped me to gain a better understanding on how to use photo shop and how to edit pictures, as i gained more knowledge of what i was doing i became a bit more confident and chose to experiment a bit more with how i edited the pictures before when i didn't have much understanding i just adjusted the lighting and contrast of the picture and cropped out anything as much as i could that i didn't want in the picture. As i experimented more i was able to cut around the part of the image that i wanted and remove the unwanted background or anything that was included that i didnt want and chose to put it onto a plain background, i learnt to do this by using the magnetic lasso tool. Also i learnt how to change the colours of only parts of the picture, how to smooth and feather out the edges of the images to make them look more appealing and not show that they had been cut away from the orginal backgrounds, how to add borders and a background using the gradiant tool that you can slightly see on the main task. Comparing the two covers you can see how the use of gaining the better understanding has made more of a difference to my final piece.

How did you attract your audience?

In this slide i`ve continued explaining how i attracted my audience using examples from the contents and middle page.

The main ways are the use of informal and text that would appeal to them the reason for this is that the target audience for my magazine wouldnt want to read something thats formal because the reason for the magazine is to be able to enjoy it and have an escape. The use of language such as "Voting verdict"appeals to the audience because they can interact with the magazine and have their own say, "poster special" attracts the audience by giving them free things that they are interested in, the information on the magazines own events and awards that are featured attract the audience because they can only find out about it in this magazine, with information on gigs and having a week planner attracts the audience because they have a chance to find out about bands and artists that they are intrested in and when they will be preforming. Also the size and amount of text attracts the audience because it tells them about what they want to know but the small and short paragraphs keep the readers attention at the same time, so they wont be put off by a mass amount of text that would be to long to read. The bold headings and language techniques help to attract the audience by making it stand out drawing their attention to that particular part of the magazine, the language techniques help by making the writting more relaxed and more appealing to read, if the title of the main story sounds catchy then they will be more likely to read it to find out what it`s about.

How did you attract your audience?

Explained in this slide is how i attracted my audience.
The main ways i attracted my audience was by thinking about what would make my product appealing to a reader, this included bold headings, catchy tag lines, bold emotive language, lower price of the magazine and events that would be beneficial for the audience reading my magazine for example competitions. The bold headings make the magazine stand out and identify clearly the name of the magazine. The catchy tag lines attract the audience by giving them a taste of whats inside then encouraging them to want to buy the magazine. The bold emotive language such as "exclusive" helps to attract the audience because it is something that the magazine has reported or has first so they would be the first to find out new information on what they are interested in. The lower price than other magazines £2.10 wouldn`t attract them that much because all the prices are around the same but being cheaper than other magazines and not more expensive would attract them. Features of the magazine such as competitions would attract the audience by giving them the chance to win something they are interested in.

Who would be the target audience for your media product?

In this slide is the basic outline of my target audience, i will explain the reasons behind why i have chosen this target audience.
The reason i chose to create my magazine to appeal to both male and female is because the majority of people that listen to the genre of music are of mixed genders, also because then this creates a larger target audience making it easier to appeal to more people, and increase the reputation of the magazine.
The reason is chose to aim to the age group of 15-30 is because the genre of music that my magazine features appeals to that age group. The decision behind aiming my magazine towards middle class people is because the language and style of the magazine would appeal more and be understood better by them. The reason behind aiming my magazine towards people who are intrested in rock/indie music is because it seems to be the most common genre of music at the moment and many sub genres can be included so again this creates a larger target audience and makes my magazine appealing to a wider range of people. Also another reason is because if they werent intrested in this genre then the magazine wouldn`t appeal to them so its clear why it was aimed towards them.

My plan and futher research on target audience here

What kinds of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

In this slide are the two main types of media institutions that might distribute my magazine, these are Bauer media and IPC media and the magazines which they publish. Each company would have advantages and disadvantages, if i chose Bauer media it already publishes three well known magazines that have a high reputation, which could pose problems for a magazine that would be just starting out, such as competition between the magazines. Also, all three have similar target audiences and the genre of my magazine is the same as the three already owned which could cause a problem because Bauer may think that publishing my magazine wouldn`t be beneficial for them because of the existing ones. However the advantages would be that it is reliable and would be beneficial because its worldwide so your magazine would become well known in more than one country.
If i chose IPC Media it publishes one well known magazine which would be a better starting point because there wouldn`t be as much competition between magazines already being published. However IPC owns nme which is a similar genre to my magazine meaning it would have the same target audience this could be a disadvantage because they are so similar but could also be an advantage because if so many people read nme then the same people could be interested in my magazine because of the similarities between them both.
I think that the best company to distribute my magazine would be IPC media for the reasons above.
For more of my research on the publishers look here.

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

In this slide I'm comparing my double page and how it uses, develops and challenges the forms and conventions of real media products. It does this by including such things as; the heading continuing the house style which runs throughout the magazine to create an identity for the magazine. It uses the smaller pictures which run down the side of the page, making the page look neater because they don`t clutter the page, also i think that it balances out the text and the images and helps to keep the attention of the audience. The main subject in both fill the page and as with all magazines relates to the text which is featured, the reason i chose to do this was because the main image has to draw the attention of the reader to the page and make them want to continue reading the article. The main text is the same, both magazines use informal text and fonts which relate to the target audience and seeing as mine is very much the same as nme both are similar. Nme includes a part which gives information on other pages that relate to the article on that page, and is benefical because it encourages and informs readers that are intrested in the article, where to find other articles that are linked.

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

In this slide I'm comparing my contents page and the ways in which it uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products. My contents page of my magazine and nme`s contents page are similar and the way in which it uses and develops forms and conventions is both magazines have the headings of the page at the top and create the house style that runs throughout the magazine. There is a main picture on both magazines that links to the main story and fills the page. The headlines of the main story stand out to the other articles featured on the contents page, making it stand out to the audience. The layout is consistent with the subheadings of the catergories listed and then the articles relating to them listed underneath, i chose this idea because i thought that it looked more appealing and professional than just a list.

The way in which it challenges the forms and conventions of real media products is by including a logo which is consistent on each page and gives the magazine an identiy because whenever the audience saw the logo then they would relate it to the magazine which makes the magazine well known. Also my magazine doesn`t include a side bar like nme where it features the "band index" i feel that if it did the page would look over crowded with text and become unappealing to the audience because of it being time consuming to read all of it.

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

In this slide are the similar ways in which my media product uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products.Using the heading of the magazine shown clearly and in the larger text to show its the name in the same way, the main subject in both magazine fill up most of the page which draws the attention of your audience, the headlines of whats featured inside are shown clearly and both use emotive language to draw attention.




The way in which my media product challenges the forms and conventions of real media products is by including a consistant logo which helps to identify anything to do with the magazine. Where nme doesn`t include a logo. My magazine doesn`t have a background which sometimes can be a disadvantage with magazines but i think that if i was to include a background it would make the page look cluttered and ruin the way the magazine looks, whereas nme uses the image as a background which covers the page but i think this makes it look more busy and cluttered. The main images i`ve used are clear and fill the page without making it look to busy, whereas the nme magazine uses lots of images and the way in which they overlap eachother at the bottom are harder to see because of the main image that has been used as the background. On my magazine it includes a bar at the top and bottom of the page which tells the reader some of what is featured inside i think that this is an advantage and makes the page look more professional and appealing, whereas nme has text scattered on the page in boxes which does the same thing but gives a sense that its unorganised.

Evaluation

This is my finished media product that was created in photoshop. The evaluation of my media product will be presented in two parts, the explanation of the questions, which we were given to use to evaluate our work will be posted on here. As well as the PowerPoint which will give reference to what i will be talking about with examples and pictures.

Main task

Finally finished my main task.

Photos & Editing

These are the photos i have used throughout my main task, some of them in order to use had to be edited, such as cutting out the main image and creating a white background so that it would look more professional and appealing. And croping the picture so that any unnecessary parts of the picture wouldn`t be included.

These two pictures i used on my front cover. I first decided to use just the first picture but to cut out the model and use the image with a white background, i did this but using the magnetic lasso tool and then smoothing the edges after i then moved the picture onto a white background and adjusted the colour slightly of the top using the hue. Then i was happy the way the image looked. Once i moved the image on my front cover and re sized it to fill the page like my first idea it didn`t look right and gave the cover a different look to what i wanted. So i decided to stick with the image but re sized it so it looked right which was done by making it slightly smaller and keeping it to one side of the page. Then i decided to use the other image as well this was a little more difficult to use without editing, so first i cut out as much of my model as i could with the magnetic lasso tool and feathered the edges which gave it a blurred look around the edge then i moved it onto a white background and fitted the image onto my cover in the space next to the other image this looked better than the first time round.


I used the picture of the guitar as my logo, which was the picture i edited the most. First i cut out the picture because i didn't need the background as the setting the picture was taken in didn't really seem appropriate and a white background would look more appealing. Then i feathered the picture and smooth the edges which got rid of the jagged edges caused when cutting around the picture.

Before i changed the background of the picture, i adjusted the lighting and contrast of the guitar to make it look more appealing and brighter. Then i transferred the picture onto the white background and decided that it looked a lot better than it did.

After i had changed the background, i reduced the size of the guitar seeing as it was being used as the logo and couldn't be as big as it was. After i was happy with the size i added text and completed my logo.

Publishers

We looked at two magazine publishers these were Bauer media and IPC media.

Bauer Media is Europe’s largest privately owned publishing Group. The Bauer Publishing Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 230 magazines in 15 countries, such as Kerrang, empire, mojo, Q, pop, more, closer,heat, grazia, FHM, as well as online, TV and radio stations. The mutlimedia publications strategy is to connect with audiences with content through our broad multi-touch point brand, wherever and however they want.
http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/



The advantages of choosing Bauer media would be that its international so more copys of your magazine would sell, with it being worldwide. Bauer media has a reputation so your magazine wouldn`t have any problems. However some of the disadvantages of Bauer magazine is the competition with magazines already owned would make it harder for your magazine to get seen.

IPC Media is the UK's leading consumer magazine producer. Owning 80 magazines such as; NME, Marie Claire, Golf monthly, Now, Pick me up, Nuts, World soccer. Also owning the online version of nme.com. Almost two in every three UK women and over 44% of UK men read an IPC magazine.
http://www.ipcmedia.com/



Some of the advantages of IPC media is that they dont own many music magazines so it would make it easier for your magazine to sell with less competition. It would be a good place to start if you were releasing a new magazine. The only disadvantage would be it that its not an international company, and doesnt have as many multimedia publications.


Comparing both publishers, i think the best publisher for my music magazine would be IPC media, because it has less competition which would enable my magazine to have more of chance to sell. Also it would be a better place to start to see how popular the magazine would become in the UK instead of becoming worldwide straight away, and not having many sales.

18th March

Todays lesson was another important lesson spent in the computer room working on our main task. I spent the lesson working on my contents page. There were no major problems with photoshop this time which is an improvement. I got the structure of the page done and chose the house style i was going to use, just have to continue with it. I researched a bit more on the use of house styles used in NME and kerrang, which helped.

Plan for the contents page is to have one big picture the covers the top half of the page then below have 3 columns with page numbers and titles linking to whichever page, also using smaller images and text to relate to pages included in the magazine, but not too many so that the page will look overcrowed, the title will be in the same font that i have chosen and will be bright to include colour. Using some of the ideas gathered from the examples above aswell as some of my own.

Front Cover

I made a start on my front cover for the main task, this however seemed to take up the whole double lesson due to the confusion of using photoshop again, with moving edited images onto the cover. Eventually by the end of the lesson it began to look like a music magazine, so no time was wasted just took longer than expected. This was all made alot easier because of having completed the mock up and had ideas on what i wanted it to look, and a rough guideline on how to do it.

On Mondays lesson we got the mark scheme which gave us an idea and realisation on what we should be aiming for, and what we need to include. With finding out this i was able to create a to-do list on what i need to do. So far there is no outstanding media work that needs to be done or i have missed which is good.

Mock up and photos

I`ve decided that my magazine is going to be indie/rock. I have chosen this genre because i personally like the music and also we researched this genre in class, so i think that it will be easier to produce this kind of magazine.The music magazines i have researched to get ideas for my own, helped in the design of mine. NME and Kerrang were the main magazines i based my mock up on. The target audience for my magazine would be aimed at young adults and teenagers 15-30 varried age, that are intrested in this genre of music and trends therefore the magazine will apeal to what they enjoy. Images will be of bands, current and upcoming, advertising images from gigs and events. Design of the magazine colours; black white and red, fonts; bold, catching attention and appealing to the audience. Identity role models would be of artists and bands featured in the magazine, trends would be topshop/topman etc. Interactivity of the magazine would include interviews, reviews, and competions that are advertised in the magazine that link to the website and voting for events such as awards that happen. Surveillance would include festivals, gigs, awards ( N! awards). Escape making it enjoyable to read because its up to date in what their intrested in such as music, events, fashion. My magazine will appeal to an audience that are intrested in indie/rock music also such trends that are seen within this category of music. In the magazine there will be interviews with exclusive bands and artists also reviews on the latest music, events and gigs. This will encourage my target audience to enjoy the magazine and have a sense of escape when reading it, being up to date with the latest music and events.

There were a few problems with designing the mock up, i had trouble with the layout and how to link the house style to the style and genre of the magazine. But with a few days of working on it everything seemed to sort itself out. Throughout the magazine i need to remember to use the same fonts and style of headings to gain the house style.

The plan for my front cover is i plan to use a large image that will take up most of the front cover and stand out. Then have smaller images towards the bottom advertising smaller stories that will appear inside, one of the images advertising the double page spread. Also my front cover will have, a bold title that will be at the top of the cover, bold headings and bright coloured backgrounds behind the text. Date, price and bar code.

For the contents page is to have one big picture the covers the top half of the page then below have 3 columns with page numbers and titles linking to whichever page, also using smaller images and text to relate to pages included in the magazine, but not too many so that the page will look overcrowed, the title will be in the same font that i have chosen and will be bright to include colour.

And for my double page spread is to have the main image covering the two pages with a bold title, then a few paragraph`s underneath about it. Then to the right hand edge of the page have a photostrip of images also realted to the main image and information given.



I came up with ideas that i could use for some of the photographs, these being some photos that i already had taken at gigs, and festivals that i had been to, also i could relate the stories and advertising of events in my magazine. The other photos that i am going to use have been planned out i have the people that i am going to use, and there outfits etc all done and photos taken.

It was important that we had our photographs and mock ups ready for last weeks double lesson (11th March) so that we could start straight away on out main task, and that there would be no confusion as to what to do.

Homework/research

Our task was to write and comment on the genre of music, our group had been given rock; this could be split up into many sub-genres such as, classic rock, indie, emo, screamo, metal etc. The expectations for this genre of music were very stereotypical; dark colours with white because most of us had read the magazine before. Appealing to a young audience seeing as a lot of teenagers listen to music and it`s seems to be the most common genre, a mixed audience that was interested in rock. Would include such things as interviews, gig dates, reviews, information to do with rock music etc. Language used to be informal and aggressive due to the stereotype rock musicians follow. We thought about artists that would be featured Nickleback etc

When we studied the magazine we found our expectations to be right in most aspects we were asked to look at, however some were not such as; the audience seems to appeal to an older generation as well as younger with older artists reappearing. The layout was at first glance scattered on certain pages, but once you began reading each part was organised and presented neatly with dark colours mostly, then a hint of colour on certain pages relating to what the page was reviewing or advertising. The language we expected was correct, informal with lots of information included in blocks set out in text boxes to fill the page, which would take time to read. Abusive and offensive language and slang was used in interviews with bands and reviews, keeping will the stereotypical theme of rock. The content of the magazine included, interviews and news about current bands and up and coming bands introducing them, reviews, gigs, posters, and advertising clothes, games, albums etc. Typical artists including slipknot, and bring me the horizon were featured. The size of the magazine was surprising being such a well know magazine we expected it to consist of more, but it was a smaller magazine with fewer pages not including as much.

The website which we looked at was NME, the layout for this was well set out which made it easier for the reader. The menu bar placed along the top was full of links that took you to each separate page and put everything into categories making it easier to find what you were looking for. The important and main information filled the front page with new top stories down the left side of the page which acted like a contents. It`s filled with pictures and captions, and very interactive with videos, blogs, their own radio station also it lets you vote for the NME awards and subscribe to receive emails and news updates. The house style and colours are bright the background advertising the NME awards.


Powerpoint

We were set the task of researching a magazine that we had previously looked at, and producing a powerpoint including: the history of the magazine, the publication, circulation, publisher, how it appeals to its audience, the content of the magazine and the audiences intrests.
I chose NME magazine for this task, seeing as the genre of my main task would be very similar so it would be beneficial reasearching and being able to gain ideas of how you connect to your audience through your magazine.