3^rd October 2008

In media we got told that for are coursework we will be making magazines. So firstly we analysed the front cover of three magazines and then we analysed the contents page of five magazines.

Code and Conventions of:

Front Cover

· Title starts in top left corner (usually covers top section).

· Large main picture, takes up the whole page.

· Sometimes contains smaller pictures in three of the corners.

· Headlines indicating what will be in the magazine.

· All contain price and date issued (both are placed together around the barcode)

· Writing surrounds the main picture, arranged in columns.

· Includes quotes.

· Has the issue number, usually on right-hand side.

· Title is only one or two words (mostly one)

· Title font is unique, made by graphic artist.

· The title is the magazines identity

· Main picture contains faces/people. Text never covers the face.

· The main pictures eyes are engaging (looking straight at the audience)

· Main coverline (line of text on cover) is linked with the main image and anchors its meaning.

· Nearly always includes a puff (giving the audience something else). For Example: 20% off.

· The text on the front cover is used to intrigue the audience to find out more.

· Simple colour scheme: oranges, reds, whites, blues etc (always consistent).

· Website address (usually under title).

· Positioning statement. For example: ‘Worlds Biggest Music Magazine’. This is usually placed below the title.

· Coverline only a couple of words with a sub line explaining cover line.

· Coverline usually uses alliteration and is in capital letters, or a bold font.

· Buzzword, term given to key words used to attract audience attention. For Example: Plus, Exclusive etc.

Contents Page

• Page number at bottom right on left-hand page.
• Column of text on left-hand side of left-hand page and right-hand side for right-hand page.
• Contains lots of pictures
• Image of front cover
• Credits of front cover image (photographers name)
• Same font/face type used
• Pictures take up most of the layout

6^th October 2008

In media today we went through the different shot types used by a variety of Medias, these included:

• Extreme close-up
• Big close-up
• Close-up
• Medium close-up
• Mid Shot
• Very long shot
• Long shot
• Medium long shot
• Over the shoulder shot
• High angle
• Low angle
• Tilted Frame
• Two shot

7^th October 2008

In this lesson we were put into groups of fours and fives and given worksheets on camera shots/angles, we also had to be creative and come up with two final shots to convey certain things. The tasks on the worksheet included:

• A low angle medium close-up
• A high angle long shot
• An extreme close-up of time
• A big close-up of someone using a mobile phone
• A close-up of someone in nature
• A two shot in medium long shot
• An over the shoulder shot of someone writing
• A very long shot conveying isolation
• A medium close-up of a teacher
• A long shot of someone who is drunk

Finally we had to take two shots conveying different things; we were not allowed to use people or body parts.

• A photo which has connotations of friendship
• A photo which has connotations of stress

8^th October 2008

Today we uploaded the pictures we took for the worksheet yesterday and in our groups gave them captions, we then discussed with the class what we thought worked well and what we felt we could have done better, we also compared images for the final two tasks.

9^th October 2008

Today we started to work through the task sheet for our coursework, starting with the preliminary exercise. For this we had to produce the front cover and contents page of a magazine for a school. Before this we had to make a publication plan listing 10 feature articles and regular content which would appear on the contents page, we also had to list the images we wanted to take, the front cover image had to be a mid-shot or medium close-up of a student.

10^th October 2008

Today we continued with the preliminary exercise, we had to draw rough sketches of the layouts for the front cover and contents page, and state what images were going to appear on them to prepare ourselves for the next lesson were we would be taking the images.

13^th October 2008

In this lesson we started to take the pictures we had planned that were going to appear in the magazine, the images I took were the following:

14^th October 2008

Today we learnt the basics of editing software such as ‘Photoshop’ and ‘Quark Express’, as these would be the two programs used to produce our school magazine, ‘Photoshop’ will be used for the front cover and ‘Quark Express’ for the contents pages. Our teacher gave us a quick demonstration at the front of the class as we all followed along.

15^th October 2008

Today we started producing the magazine by putting what we learnt yesterday into practice, we uploaded our pictures and put the one we had selected to be the front cover images onto ‘Photoshop’ and began to edit it, we also produced the layout: including cover lines, barcodes etc.

16^th October 2008

Today we carried on producing our magazine and finished off our front cover, once this was done we started to produce the contents page on ‘Quark Express’, following the codes and conventions.

17^th October 2008

Today we finished off our contents page and made sure our front cover pages were completely finished for the school magazine.

18^th October – 24^th October

In this lesson we finished the preliminary exercise by evaluating what we had produced and on the 24^th we handed them into our teacher. This is my evaluation:

Evaluation

Overall I do not feel that my school magazine has not worked to well, the layouts do not look professional nor do the images. I do prefer the layout of my front cover as I feel this follows the codes & conventions of a traditional music magazine, the title starts at the top left corner, it has a unique font and is large. The date & price are placed underneath this too the right, the coverlines are in bold with short sublines used to describe in brief what the article contains. There is a main coverline in larger font which is centered & a barcode at the bottom right. Although my contents page does follow the codes & conventions, it does not look as good as the front cover, this is because the layout I have chosen is worse and too messy. The contents page contains: the word ‘contents’, large page numbers overlapping pictures, pictures layout out in a collage style way, there is a column of text on the left hand side containing articles, this are numbered with the headings in bold, they have short coverlines containing a brief introduction to what the article is about.

3^rd November 2008

Today we started the main task which was to produce a music magazine therefore we added the music magazine codes and conventions to the original magazine codes and conventions. These included:

Front Cover

• Pictures overlap title often missing out a letter or two, for well established magazines.
• Column of text above title, often containing buzz word ‘plus’ etc. this is used to make the reader feel like its value for money.
• Title consists of one word.
• One main large image
• Main image usually consists of a single artist although they also include bands.
• Main coverline is placed just under half way down the page.
• Price and date above barcode.
• The body language used for main image is very important, used to convey attitude, hardly ever smiling.
• Freebees

Contents Page

• One main image larger than the rest.
• Font is important as certain font types represent certain music genres.
• Extremely conventional of most magazines contents pages.

4^th November – 7^th November

We started to make a PowerPoint presentation including research on music magazines of the same genre, examples of these include ‘Mixmag’ and ‘DJ Mag’, I collected image of there front cover and contents pages and found out information such as: price, issue size and frequency of publication.

10^th November

Today we found out we needed to construct audience research, to do this we would be making a questionnaire asking questions on how much they would pay for a music magazine, what words come to mind when they hear dance music etc.

11^th November – 14^th November

Today we produced the questionnaire, and printed off 20 copies to be filled out by our target audiences. This is my questionnaire:

Media Questionnaire

For my media coursework I am making a dance music magazine, part of my coursework is to conduct audience research, please would you help me with this by filling out this questionnaire.

Q1: Gender:

Male  Female 

Q2: Age:

16  17  18  19  20  21 

Q3: How often do you buy a music magazine?

Daily 

Weekly 

Fortnightly 

Monthly 

Never 

Other 

If other please specify:

_____________________________________________________________________

Q4: How much would u spend on a new dance music magazine?

£2 - £2.49 

£2.50 - £2.99 

£3 - £3.50 

Q5: On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being essential and 5 is worthless, how do you rate the following aspects of a dance music magazine? (Please circle)

Interviews Pictures Tech Equipment Names of Tunes Gig Listings Freebees

1 1 1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5 5

Q6: Who is your favourite artist from the dance music genre?

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_____________________________________________________________________

Q7: What three words come to mind when you hear dance music?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Q8: Name three colours that you would associate with dance music:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

THANKS FOR FILLING OUT MY QUESTIONNAIRE

17^th – 24^th November 2008

After getting our questionnaires filled out we stored the results in a spreadsheet, creating graphs, we then made conclusions and added the graphs and conclusions to our PowerPoint files.

25^th November – 28th November 2008

We now started to create a publication plan; this included all the vital information about our magazine, this is mine:

Publication Plan

Title: LOUD

Positioning statement: & Proud

Frequency of publication: Monthly

Price: £2.35

Distribution: Newsagents and Supermarkets

Rational: ‘LOUD’ is different to any other dance music magazine because it has a lot of its targets audiences input, we let them write in stories and send in pictures, we also have competitions this is to create a good bond between reader and writer.

Style: A mixture of formal/informal language is used throughout the magazine, formal will be used for pages on news and club information whereas informal language will be used throughout, and this is so the reader feels more comfortable reading the magazine.

Regular Content

· Top 10 Tunes

· Gig Listings

· Techy Time – latest technician equipment

· Disturbing Dances

Feature Content

• All I Ever Wanted – The latest and most desired DJ equipment this month.
• Basshunt-Cha-What?! – Interesting facts about Jonas (Basshunter).
• Clubland 14 review.
• Darren Styles – Latest fashion.
• Disturbing Dances – Freaky, Weird, you will see…
• New MC hitting clubbing scene by storm! – Find out who the latest success story is in the clubbing scene.

1^st – 5^th December 2008

We started to create layouts for our music magazines and draw sketches, we did this for all the pages: front cover, contents page and double page spread, also we had to write down the images we wanted to take and the camera angles, location etc.

8^th -12^th December 2008

These are the images I gathered over the past week:

I chose to use this image for the main image on the contents page, this is because you can see his leg leaning against the wall in this one, and also I like the lighting and expression.

I didn’t choose this image because the light is too bright.

I did not choose this picture because I don’t like the expression.

I did not choose this picture also because I do not like the expression.

I didn’t choose this one is because the background is too busy and it was harder to edit

This is an image used in the contents page before edit.

I originally used this image for the double page spread, but realised it is harder to tell that it is someone wearing headphones than the image I have used for it now.

This is the front cover image before I edited it, I like the fact that he his looking at the microphone as it would attract the readers attention to it, also this prop has a lot to do with the main coverline and therefore anchors its meaning.

15^th – 19^th December

I started now to upload images onto Photoshop and begin editing them, firstly I just edited the lighting to make certain things stand out, also this helped create a certain mood, and these are the images after edit. I also typed in the title ‘LOUD’ and added drop shadow, outer glow, inner glow, bevel & emboss, inner shadow & stoke. This is what my front cover looked like once I had edited the title.

These are the images I edited:

5^th January – 9^th January

I now started to create the contents page of my music magazine in Quark Express, I used the drawing I had done earlier and followed the codes and conventions, I also edited more images on Photoshop, making backgrounds transparent and cropping images, this is the first draft of my contents page:

12^th January – 16^th January

I now produced the double page spread for my contents page, uploading the images and writing I had done previously, I included drop capitals and edited the size and positioning of the title, I re-edited and changed the image quite often, this is what I came up with for a first draft:

19^th January – 22^nd January

Today I produced questionnaires for my target audience to fill out, asking them questions on whether or not they thing the magazine is successful, what the would change, if the price, images, content match the genre, this is my questionnaire:

Magazine Questionnaire

Q1: How effective do you feel the front cover is?

­­­­­­□ Very Affective
□ Fairly Affective
□ Not Affective

Q2: Explain why.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Q3: Do you think the pricing of the magazine is right?

□ Yes
□ No
□ Other

Q4: If ‘Other’ please specify a price you think will be more suitable.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Q5: Do the coverlines on the front cover link well with the music genre?

□ Yes
□ No
□ Other

Q6: If ‘Other’ please specify why.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Q7: Is the font throughout readable? Would you change it? If so what to?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Q8: Are there enough pictures throughout? If no, why?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Q9: Overall would you buy the magazine? Taking into consideration: price, content, pictures?

□ Yes
□ No

Q10: If ‘No’ explain why.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I printed off 20 copies of these and got them filled out, I then later read what people had said and began to edit my magazine. These are the final designs for my magazine:

26^th January– 13^th February

Finally I began my evaluation, I did this by making a PowerPoint file and writing a script to go with it to present in front of the class. My PowerPoint will be uploaded separately, here is my evaluation script:

Evaluation

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge codes & conventions of real media products?

Slide 33

My magazine uses codes & conventions of any magazine as it has a typical layout of each of the pages; the front cover has a large title starting from the top left which has its own unique font that represents the music genre, in my case ‘Dance’. Almost everything on the front cover is used to represent the genre of music chosen, especially the main image which is why they are the vocal point of the page as it is the largest thing on the page and often covers the whole page. I have again followed codes & conventions by making the model look serious as to convey that he is serious about his music. But, with this main image I have also challenged codes & conventions by not having direct address, this is because although I wanted him to look serious I wanted it to look as though he was unknown to the reader and therefore the reader would need to find out more about him seeming as he is a new artist, I have included direct address pictures of him in the contents page to get the audience interested. Also on the front cover I include a barcode at the bottom right with the price & date placed above it, a main coverline which is used to let the reader know what type of content the magazine will contain and an idea of which artists, it also anchors the main pictures meaning as it gives you more information about the model. The rest of the coverlines also help to let readers guess what the rest of the content will contain & are used to gain interest from the readers as they do not give away much information about what the article will contain.

Slide 34

The contents page of my magazine uses codes & conventions as it contains the price, date & name of the magazine in the bottom left-hand corner; this is because it is where readers first glace when they are turning the page. Its also follows codes and conventions as it is 2/3rds images & 1/3^rd text, there is a column of text on the left containing the regular & feature content with page numbers, a picture on the front cover image, the date & the word contents. The word contents is on the contents page as to establish the page to the reader, page numbers are to simply show what page they are on, and the picture of the front cover is just to remind readers of the magazine there reading, this is also why I have put the title with the date and page number. The contents have a page number to the left, with a bold title of the article to make this information stand out & each headline contains a subline which is used to give a hint of what that article contains. The images are again used to hint at what the article is about & is used to anchor the texts meaning.

Slide 35

The double page spread follows codes & conventions as it contains a large title across both pages, to link both the pages and also to make it obvious which article the reader is on. This large title is followed by a standfirst to give more detail about what the whole article will contain, then followed by this is the rest of the text. During the text there is a quote which I have made larger and used bold font, this is because some readers just read the standfirst then the quote to see if they are interested about the article as the quote can give away quite a large amount about it. Also on my double page spread I have one main image which is used to anchor the texts meaning & again let the reader know a little more about the article without actually reading it.

Q2: How does your media product represent a particular social group?

Slide 36

My media product is aimed at generally male teenagers & young adults that are interested in dance music, this is shown by the main image, as this image is a representation in itself of the type of person that would read the magazine but it is amplified as to convey more attitude, the clothes and props in my main image are very important I have chosen to use a ‘hoody’ as this is stereotypically what my target audience wears, microphones play a very important part in a specific type of dance music (MCing) and because the artist that my main coverline is about is a MC I have chosen to use this prop. The colour scheme is also important as this represents a bit about the character, eg for metal magazines dark colours are used to make it seem sinister, whereas in my magazine I use lively, bright colours: greens and whites, to not only represent music but to show that the people into dance are generally lively, the colours also represent the type of place that my audience would go, as most dance gigs are raves and have lots of very bright lighting. The content of my magazine represents what my audience is interested in, but in a very broad way as there are lots of types of dance music, therefore I have tried to use a selection of genres of dance for the front cover to make sure all dance music fans have something they will be drawn to on it. The content represents which artists they are into and how social they are.

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Slide 37

My magazine will be distributed at supermarkets such as: ‘Tesco’, ‘Asda’, newsagents for example: ‘WHSmiths’

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Slide 38

The audience that my product is aimed at is mainly male but generally anyone into dance music but specifically teenagers into dance music.

Q5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Slide 39

I attract my audience by using a bright vibrant colour scheme which ill hopefully make my magazine stand out from the rest & my audience may be able to tell by this the genre of music that the magazine includes, also I use a striking main image, the red ‘hoody’ contrasts my colour scheme which helps make this image stand out even more, the image consists of a vital ‘prop’ used in dance music (a microphone) which will again emphasis the genre of music this magazine is & therefore helping to attract an audience. The main features that help attract the audience are the coverlines & the freebee, thanks to these the audience can pinpoint the genre of music & hopefully if thanks to the main image, title & colour scheme they are still interested the coverlines & freebee will attract them enough to make them buy the magazine.

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies through producing your media product?

Slide 40

Through producing my media product I have learnt how to use two key pieces o software for producing a magazine, these are: ‘Photoshop’ & ‘QuarkXpress’ I also improved my digital camera skills as I learnt more about camera angles & shot types. On Photoshop I learnt all the basics as I had never used the software before I had done the preliminary exercise, after learning this I learnt how to edit images & text, how to design backgrounds & how to create front cover layouts etc. On QuarkXpress I leant again all of the basics as I had never used this software either, I learnt how to import text & images, make columns & create layouts.

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to design your media product?

Slide 41

Since creating my school magazine I have learnt a lot in terms of photography, I have learnt how to use camera angles, how to position models, how to use props, which shot types to use & about direct address. I have also learnt a lot more in terms of editing, how to erase backgrounds, improve lighting, removing red eye. I have also learnt how to create good questionnaires & to make sure they are filled out in enough detail; also I have learnt how to collect & record results using ‘Excel’. My Photoshop skills have improved as I am now a lot better at editing images & texts, & can also create my own backgrounds. I feel I have not learnt a lot more through using QuarkXpress as I am not yet used to all it features, but I do think my layouts for the contents page and double page spread are a lot better than the layouts of my school magazine. Also I have learnt in terms of codes & conventions just how important they are in making a magazine look like the real thing, this is why I decided to hardly develop them & to never challenge them.