Research

I did some research online, into some of the different pop magazines and what features they include in their magazines.

A few of the magazines I found were:



TOP OF THE POPS

Target Audience= 11-15 year old
(Mainly girls)

WE LOVE POP

Target Audience= 13-15 year old
 ( Mainly girls)

POP STAR

Target Audience=

            http://www.welovepopmag.co.uk/    http://www.popstaronline.com/           http://www.totpmag.com/

                                                    
                                                                                                                   
On these websites, I could gain a lot of information about their magazine. Things such as the latest gossip, the top songs in the charts, the latest trends of the pop stars and so on.
These are all things that may interest the target audience, and within the variety of information offered, there would be something for everyone, as the magazines do not want to leave their audience unsatisfied.

Analysis of a 'Pop' Magazine

As I have chosen to base my music magazine on the 'Pop' genre, I will have to ensure I use the correct conventions to attract my target audience.

I took a picture from the internet, of a well known pop magazine, and analysed the use of conventions, colour pallet and other aspects that would have influenced the target audience's views on the magazine.

Here I looked at the representation of the magazine by analysing the key conventions.

Representation- How something is put across to the audience
                          - The message being conveyed
                          - What our ideologies are about what we see, as the reader
                          - What the audience gains from it


It shapes the target audience: - It makes them feel involved, as they can identify with it.
                                               - The particular genre has to represent the audience.
                                               - It creates it's own world just for that target audience to be apart of.

Music Magazine- First Thoughts

The main exam piece for media is the music magazine, so I have started thinking about what I want to do.
During last lesson, we came up with ideas, as a group, of how to get prepared for this. I need to decide on a genre, and then I can begin planning the other concepts, like a suitable colour scheme, masthead and photography to fit the genre.

At the moment, the genre I am considering is Pop, because I enjoy listening to this genre of music therefore I think I can easily relate with my target audience.

I am planning on preparing a questionnaire to get some ideas on what people like in a magazine.
Including questions like -"What is your favourite genre of music?"
                                        -"What lures you in to buying the magazine?"
                                        -"What price would you pay for a magazine?"

Foundation Portfolio- School Magazine

I am really pleased with the overall look of my school magazine, and both the front cover and the contents page fit together well. They look professional and conventional, in what a magazine would look like.
I also think I made the target audience quiet clear, using a colour pallet that suits both genders.
Moreover, I have ensured that the conventions all come together to lure the target audience in to buy and read the magazine.

This is my front cover. I ensured that the colour pallet of this would match the colour pallet of the contents page. this meant that the target audience would run through to the following page too. 

I incorporated many different conventions, which I have learnt about since the start of my media course. 

For this page, I used images to link with the text. For example, the collage of images at the top relate to the 

subtitle for page 28- 'Last years prom pictures'.
I have learnt that by laying images in a collage, or by overlapping images makes the page look interesting, creative and distinctive.

Props and costumes- School Magazine

For my school magazine, I chose to create a completely new school, one which was a Dance school.
This meant that I had to use props and costumes to make sure that the model I used looked the part, and would fit the theme of the magazine. Not only this, but that the model I used was quite young so the target audience would be made clear through this convention.

To do this:

• I dressed my model in a dance outfit. A dress that was used for a dance competition that my friend was apart of. 
• My model was a teenage girl, therefore she would definitely suit the target audience of my magazine.
• I did my model's hair and makeup to look like a ballerina. I put her hair in a tight bun, which put emphasis on the dance theme, especially ballet for this particular photo.

This is a photo, showing the hair, makeup, costume and pose, all making an impact on the theme of the magazine, and the target audience.

Medium Close- Up

This is the medium close up image I have chosen to use for my magazine front cover.

A medium close up image consists of only head and shoulders, therefore I ensured I followed this rule and didn't go off task.

I managed to take a suitable photo which was a medium close up, and still incorporated the              'ballerina- style' pose I was going for, to attract the target audience, which would be dance students.

I also thought that by using a young, teenage model for my photographs would help make the target audience clearer.



Contents Page

Now that I have completed my front cover for my school magazine, this lesson I began planning the contents page.

I started looking at various magazines such as 'Company' and 'NME' to pick out ideas about the layout, the amount of text, and the images I want for my own contents page.

NME Contents Page

After coming up with some ideas, I made a start on the contents page design.
As a class, we were put in pairs to peer assess each others work so far. My page was not complete, but was assessed anyway.

Some of the comments I received were 'Good layout' and 'Make it more colourful'. These will be taken into consideration when I come to complete my contents page.

This was the original design of my contents page.

 I then considered the colour of the background.



I changed the title font and the layout, as well as adding more to it.

The images show the change of colour pallet, to ensure the target audience is both genders.

They also show how I have experimented with text boxes, fonts and spacing.

I will continue to develop my contents page further now that I have come up with some ideas.

Photography- How Could I Improve?

Although I think the overall completion and production of my photographs was successful, there is a couple of things I regret and would perhaps change next time.

Firstly, I think the main thing that didn't work the way I wanted was the lighting. Every time I tried to take a photo, it came out with large shadows all around the silhouette of the model. This may have been because we took the photographs in the afternoon, therefore my solution would be to take my photographs in the daytime or even early in the morning, to ensure the photographs are free of shadows.

Also, I struggled to find a suitable background, as I was in a house with not many white backgrounds. I did end up finding a background that was suitable, but because of the time of day, I had to edit out the shadows and the darkness of the photo quality. Next time, I could resolve this issue by using a plain white sheet as the backdrop for the photos.

Photography Editing

Before applying my photography to the magazine, I made sure they looked professional.
I used Photoshop on my computer to adjust the pictures slightly - Things such as the lighting, the sharpness and the colouring.

BEFORE

This is the photo BEFORE I used Photoshop to adjust the certain aspects that needed adjusting.

For example, the image here looks quite dark, and there a few shadows that show up quite clearly. By using the Photoshop I hoped to minimize these problems.



AFTER

This is the image AFTER Photoshop had been used.
It looks much brighter, and there is much less shadowing. The facial features are much clearer, as well as the body position looking much sharper now, as there is contrast between the colour of the background and the subject.


















School Mag Photography

When I used my camera to take the images for my magazine, I made sure I had a variety of
camera angles, camera shots and that I positioned my model differently each time, to give myself a few choices when it came to picking the most suitable.

These are a few of the photographs I took:

After experimenting with the camera, and taking these photographs, I decided on the ones I would use for my magazine cover and contents page.
The ones I chose were the bottom two, as the others did not fit the theme I wanted to go for, which was a ballerina-style pose.
One of the pictures did have shadows under the ears but I made sure they were removed when I came to applying the picture to my contents page.

Learning Photography Skills

The next lesson was on photography, and how we should go about taking our images for the magazine cover. I enjoyed this lesson, as it gave me some good ideas about how I would take my pictures.

First, we watched a video on photography, to get to grips with how to frame and take a strong photo. I wrote down some tips, so I could remember them.

1)      Holding the camera close to my body, to prevent shaking and blurring.

2)      Centre of the frame (the active focus point) should be the persons face.

3)      Set up a good light source, using a lamp and an umbrella, so that the light spreads out in the direction of the subject, against the background.



Lighting set-up

For my own photography, I want to try using something like this for my lighting. I think this is the best way to get good, strong pictures, without having unwanted shadows.





I learnt a few tips from this lesson overall, and will use them for my own photography:

·        I learnt that one of the most important things was that the picture I take for my magazine needs to be a MEDIUM CLOSE- UP (a shot that includes only head and shoulders).

·         I also learnt that the mise-en-scene is very important. (Mise-en-scene means everything the audience sees in the frame of a picture)

There are four things that make up the mise-en-scene in photography:

-Props

-Costume

-Background

-Lighting

  

Peer Assessment

Once we had completed our own mock-up’s and compared them to a few others, we started a fresh, and this one would be our final magazine. I followed the main theme of my mock-up, but altered a few things slightly such as the colour pallet. I wanted to make sure it was a unisex magazine, and not too feminine.

 At the end of this lesson we were paired up and reviewed another person’s magazine cover, although they were still incomplete. My partner made comments on my magazine cover and answered a few questions:

 

1: Who is the target audience? – School children aged 15-18. Mainly aimed at girls.

(This was incorrect as I was aiming it at both genders; therefore this led me to change the colour pallet so that it was clearer who the target audience was.)

 

2: What conventions have been used? –The masthead, skyline, lures, anchorage text.

(These were the features I had included so far, however there were still a few more to be added.)

 

3: Does the masthead represent the audience? –The masthead is a plain colour so it doesn’t represent the target audience, girls.

(Again, my target audience has been misunderstood here, and is actually for both genders, so the colour of my masthead was appropriate.)

 

4: Assess the colour pallet –The main colour on this magazine is white however there is a splash colour of a purple colour.

(I will make changes to this now, as I have had feedback and can see that my colour pallet needs to be changed to fit both genders. I will change purple to a blue/purple shade, so that it isn’t so feminine.)

 

My Mock-up Magazine

The next step was to begin making a mock-up of my school magazine. So I started thinking about what to call my magazine, what to include, and what my target audience will be.

I chose to make a school magazine based on dance, because this way I can set a particular target audience, and I can make sure that the conventions fit in with that theme. There were some set rules of the magazine. For example, the main image had to be a ‘medium close up’ shot. So I had to imagine what kind of image I wanted on my front cover, and how I would be presenting it to the target audience.

I began the mock-up on my computer. I tried to include all the possible conventions so that I could make it look professional, and to fit the needs for my exam.

School Magazines

On the run up to the production of our school magazines, the class discussed the things to include and the things not to include so that our magazine is at the standard it should be. We looked at a few magazines made by previous AS Level students. Some were better than others!

 

For example, the first one looked very tacky because it had too many colours on the page. This definitely gave me an idea of what not to do in my magazine.

 

However, another cover we looked at was much better. It looked professional and slick. The masthead was ‘Excel’ which not only looked good, but it linked with school too, as the schools exam board is Edexcel, which sounds very similar. The magazine cover also had a simple but noticeable colour pallet, using mostly black, white and grey. However, the use of a splash colour for key words and stories made it work, and made sure it wasn’t too dull.

 

 

We were then tested on our knowledge so far in media. The class had to fill in a set of questions. With questions such as ‘What is a skyline?’ and ‘What impact does a high angle shot have on the viewer?’ I learnt quite a lot from this because although I didn’t get them all right, they were corrected, as we marked the answers as a class. I am now quite familiar with these key definitions.


The questions I got wrong were:

1. The 'pinning down' of meaning of an image by text is...
                                     (I now know that the answer to this is Anchorage text)

2. How many images (minimum) do you have to include in your main task?...
                                     (I now know that I need 4 images in my main task)

Analysing Magazines

In class to analysing magazine covers, such as ‘Mixmag’ and ‘NME’. As a class we discussed the way the conventions shape the target audience, and discussed the genre each magazine has.
Mixmag focusses on dance music, whereas NME focusses on specific styles of music, such as rock and indie. I could see the different genres just by looking at the front covers. The use of the main image and the colour pallet made this obvious to me.

'NME'

 

 

NME used a ‘Snatched image’ which is a type of image, which looks as if it had been snatched, and a moment has been captured.

This image showed a man having a great time at a festival. This linked with the theme of the magazine and also the fact that this was a festival edition.

NME also uses brand recognition to lure the reader in further. I notice how the masthead always stays the same colour, same size and same font. it also stays in the same location on the cover.

 

'Mixmag'

 

 

On the ‘Mixmag’ cover, there was a 'Posed image' in the centre, in which a woman was looking directly at the audience. This is a device used to capture the audiences attention and lure them in to reading the magazine.

The colour pallet suggests it is quite a feminine magazine, maybe surrounding pop/dance music. Judging by the clothes she is wearing and the record player in the corner, as well as the bubble font of the masthead, I get the idea that the magazine is quite 80’s inspired.

 

 

 

Camera Shots and Angles

In this lesson, we learnt the different camera shots and camera angles used in media texts.

We then used the iPad’s in pairs, to take pictures of each other with all the different shots and angles. I enjoyed experimenting and creating different shots with the camera.
As a pair we managed to take some good shots. We took one for each camera shot, and each camera angle:

Low Angle                     Eye- Level 

                                                       High Angle                       Canted

                                                    Extreme-Long                   Medium

                                                              

                                                        Close-Up                Medium Close-Up

I learnt how to take a strong picture, by using the active focus point to ensure your subject is in the center of the frame. This is an important aspect of photography, and something I did not know before.

Continued...

The next thing we did, which I found more interesting, was reviewing and analysing a media text.
In this case it was a magazine cover.

We looked at the different conventions used, and what effect they had on the reader. 

We also looked at the unique selling point (USP) of each magazine, and how that was presented. 
I learnt quite a lot during this lesson. For example, I learnt what a ‘convention’ is. It is a word to describe all the different features and devices used in a media text, and all that we as a viewer expect to see.

 

For example, the USP of this magazine would be that it is aimed at pregnant women specifically.

 

Over the next couple of lessons I started to pick up more key terms and technical vocabulary that I had never come across before. All the conventions of a magazine cover for example, are things like the masthead, the skyline, the byline and the lures/sell lines.

Also, things such as the colour pallet, which I learnt is one of the most important aspects to a magazine cover. It is the thing that draws the chosen target audience in, and sometimes there is one or two ‘splash’ colours on the cover, to enhance the more important parts of the magazine, and to lure the reader in.

Another lure of a magazine cover is the anchorage text. This sits with the main image, and is to lure the reader in to buying the magazine and reading the main story.

After this lesson, I am confident that I will use these conventions to my advantage in my coursework.

The Start of Media

 

The Start of Media…

Media is completely new to me. I haven’t studied anything like it before so when I had my very first lesson I was excited to start learning new things in a completely new subject.

In my very first media lesson, everyone in the class was given a piece of paper with a key word written on it. My word was ‘Intertextuality’. Personally I wasn’t entirely sure of what this word meant, but when it was revealed to me I understood it more. Now I know that Intertextuality is when a media text refers to another text. We continued to learn many different words, which we had to revise further at home.


I found this lesson useful, as it widened my media vocabulary and will definitely help me in my exam, and in my coursework too.


Some of the key words I learnt in this lesson:



                            INTERTEXTUALITY
                                                                    DENOTATION
      CONNOTATION
                                          ICONOGRAPHY
            
       SIGNIFIER                              BINARY OPPOSITION
                                      USP