Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Wednesday 12th- 14th November 2008
I continued with my PowerPoint, by adding a summary slide of the content in each magazine and I also included a list of codes and conventions for; a front cover, a contents page and a double page spread, that was adapted for my genre of music magazine.
Thursday 6th- 11th November 2008
· Continued to research different magazines for my PowerPoint presentation.
· We had a class discussion about the audience research task. We decided that the best way to record our research was to produce a questionnaire and give it to members of our target audience to complete. We also decided that we would need open and closed questions to get a good response.
I produced 20 copies of my questionnaire for people to fill in. This is what I produced.
Questionnaire
I have produced this questionnaire to help me with my AS Media Coursework; I would appreciate it if you would take the time to complete it.
1. Are you…
Male? □ Female? □
2. How old are you?
15-18 □ 19-22 □ 23-25 □
3. Who is your favourite band/artist?
4. What words do you associate with ‘Indie’?
5. How often no you buy music magazines? (Please circle)
Weekly Fortnightly Monthly Never
Other (please specify)
6. How much would you pay for a magazine?
£0-£1 □ £1-£2 □ £2- £3 □ £3-£4 □
7. What is your favourite colour?
8. On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the most important and 5 is the least important, how would you rate the following aspects of a music magazine? (please circle)
Interviews 1 2 3 4 5
Reviews (gigs, albums) 1 2 3 4 5
Posters 1 2 3 4 5
News articles 1 2 3 4 5
About award ceremonies 1 2 3 4 5
Thank you for your time.
· We had a class discussion about the audience research task. We decided that the best way to record our research was to produce a questionnaire and give it to members of our target audience to complete. We also decided that we would need open and closed questions to get a good response.
I produced 20 copies of my questionnaire for people to fill in. This is what I produced.
Questionnaire
I have produced this questionnaire to help me with my AS Media Coursework; I would appreciate it if you would take the time to complete it.
1. Are you…
Male? □ Female? □
2. How old are you?
15-18 □ 19-22 □ 23-25 □
3. Who is your favourite band/artist?
4. What words do you associate with ‘Indie’?
5. How often no you buy music magazines? (Please circle)
Weekly Fortnightly Monthly Never
Other (please specify)
6. How much would you pay for a magazine?
£0-£1 □ £1-£2 □ £2- £3 □ £3-£4 □
7. What is your favourite colour?
8. On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the most important and 5 is the least important, how would you rate the following aspects of a music magazine? (please circle)
Interviews 1 2 3 4 5
Reviews (gigs, albums) 1 2 3 4 5
Posters 1 2 3 4 5
News articles 1 2 3 4 5
About award ceremonies 1 2 3 4 5
Thank you for your time.
Wednesday 5th November 2008
In this lesson I wrote up the codes and conventions of a double page spread. This is what I produced:
· The layout is dominated by one main picture, which is usually on the left side, because if it was on the right people might mistake it for an advert.
· Image- usually a whole page, can bleed from one page to the other, or can take up the whole of the double page spread. They have a creative use of framing, the lighting is carefully considered, the facial expressions convey an image for the artist, and direct address is usually used.
· Headlines- are in the largest font, don’t tell you anything about the story- they are more creative and intrigue the reader. The font is often only used for the Headline.
· Standfirst- is directly below the headline and sometimes includes the by-line. It tells the reader what the article is about and it works alongside the headline.
· Drop capital- signals where to start reading. Other techniques that also indicate this would be capitals for the first two words/ line/ few words and the use of colour.
· First paragraph- is usually has a slightly larger type size, may use bold type.
· Quotes- are extracted from the article. They are usually interesting, sensational, provocative quotes that attract the reader. The quotes are placed on the pictures or inset into the article to break up the text and to make it look more inviting to read.
· Pictures, panels of text and tables can also be used to break up the text.
· Simple colour schemes are used.
· Plugs are used at the end of the article.
· Page numbers and the name of the magazine are usually in one of the bottom corners.
· Straplines are used at the top of the page.
· Article is often in 11 or 12 pt font.
· Bold font is used in question and answer articles to separate the two.
· The articles are creatively written, showing the personality of the journalist, with their opinions. They can sometimes be subjectively bias because they are from the writer’s point of view. The articles also incorporate different styles of writing.
· Reported speech is used as well as quotes.
I then adjusted these to fit with my genre of magazine and then I added them to my Powerpoint.
· The layout is dominated by one main picture, which is usually on the left side, because if it was on the right people might mistake it for an advert.
· Image- usually a whole page, can bleed from one page to the other, or can take up the whole of the double page spread. They have a creative use of framing, the lighting is carefully considered, the facial expressions convey an image for the artist, and direct address is usually used.
· Headlines- are in the largest font, don’t tell you anything about the story- they are more creative and intrigue the reader. The font is often only used for the Headline.
· Standfirst- is directly below the headline and sometimes includes the by-line. It tells the reader what the article is about and it works alongside the headline.
· Drop capital- signals where to start reading. Other techniques that also indicate this would be capitals for the first two words/ line/ few words and the use of colour.
· First paragraph- is usually has a slightly larger type size, may use bold type.
· Quotes- are extracted from the article. They are usually interesting, sensational, provocative quotes that attract the reader. The quotes are placed on the pictures or inset into the article to break up the text and to make it look more inviting to read.
· Pictures, panels of text and tables can also be used to break up the text.
· Simple colour schemes are used.
· Plugs are used at the end of the article.
· Page numbers and the name of the magazine are usually in one of the bottom corners.
· Straplines are used at the top of the page.
· Article is often in 11 or 12 pt font.
· Bold font is used in question and answer articles to separate the two.
· The articles are creatively written, showing the personality of the journalist, with their opinions. They can sometimes be subjectively bias because they are from the writer’s point of view. The articles also incorporate different styles of writing.
· Reported speech is used as well as quotes.
I then adjusted these to fit with my genre of magazine and then I added them to my Powerpoint.
Tuesday 4th November 2008
In today’s lesson we learnt about Typography.
There are two types of Typography: Serif (T) and Sans Serif (T).
Serif has a formal old fashioned style and is often used in magazines for classical music and housekeeping which stereotypically are for an older audience.
Sans Serif has a modern and youthful style. It is often used on magazines such as ‘Kerrang’ and ‘Q magazine’. However virtually all magazines use Sans Serif because it is modern.
The Typography links to the genre of music in some way, e.g. dance music use an individual font to represent how the genre is unique.
This helped us to justify why we had chosen a particular font and to give us a better understanding of the techniques that other magazines use.
There are two types of Typography: Serif (T) and Sans Serif (T).
Serif has a formal old fashioned style and is often used in magazines for classical music and housekeeping which stereotypically are for an older audience.
Sans Serif has a modern and youthful style. It is often used on magazines such as ‘Kerrang’ and ‘Q magazine’. However virtually all magazines use Sans Serif because it is modern.
The Typography links to the genre of music in some way, e.g. dance music use an individual font to represent how the genre is unique.
This helped us to justify why we had chosen a particular font and to give us a better understanding of the techniques that other magazines use.
Monday 3rd November 2008
Today we started our PowerPoint research on magazines that are the same genre or are similar to our own. We researched what their; price, frequency of publication, issue size, regular content and feature articles was so that we could make decisions for our magazines that would rival the competing magazines.
I used the following websites to help research magazines and the companies that produce and distribute them.
www.qthemusic.com
www.bauermedia.co.uk
www.ipcmedia.com
www.kerrang.com
www.nme.com
I used the following websites to help research magazines and the companies that produce and distribute them.
www.qthemusic.com
www.bauermedia.co.uk
www.ipcmedia.com
www.kerrang.com
www.nme.com
Friday 10th- 24th October 2008
Friday
10th- 13th October
I designed my front cover and contents pages and came up with the mise-en-scene of all of the pictures and layout that would relate to each article.
Then I went round school taking pictures to use on the front cover and contents pages of my magazine, here are the pictures I produced, before I cropped, resized or reduced the opacity on them.
Tuesday 14th October
Our teacher introduced us to the programme Quark Xpress. Quark Xpress is predominantly used for desk top publishing by magazine companies because it is quick and easy to use which helps them to meet their tight deadlines.
Our teacher showed us some of the main tools that will help to produce our contents pages, we then experimented using all the tools so that we became familiar with the software, before we began producing our final products.
Wednesday 15th October
Today I uploaded my main image onto the computer. I then used Adobe Photoshop to cut around my main image for my front cover using the lasso tool because I was unhappy with the backdrop behind my subject.
Thursday 16th October
I worked on the layout for my front cover today by adding the title of the magazine, the cover lines, the price sticker and the bar code. I followed the list of codes and conventions that I had made previously in another lesson to help me.
Friday 17th October
I made adjustments to my front cover because the colour scheme didn’t make it stand out and I didn’t have enough cover lines so it made the front cover look bare. I improved it by adding more cover lines and I used one of my images which linked with the main image as the background, but I changed the opacity so that it was slightly transparent and didn’t draw attention away from my main image and the coverlines. After that I began working on my contents page.
Monday 20th October
I made my contents page look more attractive by changing the fonts so that the key words were bigger and bolder and I also added page numbers to link the images to the content.
Tuesday 21st October
Today I made the final touches to my front cover and contents pages for the preliminary exercise. I also started my evaluation.
Here are the finished products.
Thursday 23rd October
Today we discussed the connotations of each colour.
We made a list of what each colour meant to us, here is what we came up with:
Red: - anger, passion, love, lust, danger, stop, heat, fire, violence, blood, heart, roses, hell, the devil, murder.
Blue: - calm, sad, peaceful, cold, sea, sky, ice, ink, tranquillity, tears, water, depression.
Green: - nature, go, fresh, mint, land, summer, grass, illness, infection, countryside, recycling, environment, healthy, envy.
White: - pure, virginity, marriage, clinical, clean, snow, Heaven, peace, sterile, emptiness, cold, angels, light, death.
Black: - death, Halloween, Emo music, Mosher, bats, metal music, dark, depressed, evil, Goth, spiders, storm, funeral, stress, alone, seductive, sexy, mourning, grief.
We found that there were contradictions within each group for example red can signify violence and murder but it also has connotations of love and passion. This is because a colour takes on a particular meaning which depends on the context in which it is used and colours also mean different things in each culture. For example in our culture the colour green when used on a media product symbolises to us that the product is eco-friendly or it has something to do with the environment, recycling or being healthy.
This research was to help us when making choices for the colour schemes and to justify why we have used each colour.
Also in this lesson we looked at symbols and what they could represent.
Friday 24th October
The main theme of today’s lesson was the word ‘signify’ which linked back with the work from yesterday’s lesson.
We learnt about Ferdinand De Saussure the Swiss linguist who was the founder of the semiotic theory. His theory stated that sign= signifier + signified whereby the ‘signifier’ is the physical appearance of the sign for example; a cross is two lines that intersect one another and the ‘signified’ is the mental concept behind it, in this case the cross means wrong or kiss.
Our teacher then asked us to draw a tree in 5 seconds. Most of us came up with the same simple image which shows that we had a shared frame of reference and helped us to understand Ferdinand’s concept.
Also in this lesson we made a list of the code and conventions for a music magazine using our previous codes and conventions lists that we had made but adapting them specifically for the music magazine.
Codes and Conventions for a Music Magazine
- One image on the contents page is larger than the rest (main image)
- Use a 3/4/2 column layout
- Content- review of the year, gigs, about the bands, genre of music
- Pictures are different/ specific for each genre of music.
- Indie genre usually uses soft primary colours that are subtle rather than bright and in your face. The font is often black and white and in bold to make it stand out.
- Keywords- (bands/ artist) are in bold/larger/ in capitals to make it stand out.
- Black and white are usually the main colours with others depending on which genre
- The date (month and year) are above or by the contents heading.
We made this so that we would know what to include on our music magazine front cover and contents pages so that it would look realistic and follow the codes and conventions of a music magazine.
10th- 13th OctoberI designed my front cover and contents pages and came up with the mise-en-scene of all of the pictures and layout that would relate to each article.
Then I went round school taking pictures to use on the front cover and contents pages of my magazine, here are the pictures I produced, before I cropped, resized or reduced the opacity on them.
Tuesday 14th October
Our teacher introduced us to the programme Quark Xpress. Quark Xpress is predominantly used for desk top publishing by magazine companies because it is quick and easy to use which helps them to meet their tight deadlines.
Our teacher showed us some of the main tools that will help to produce our contents pages, we then experimented using all the tools so that we became familiar with the software, before we began producing our final products.
Wednesday 15th October
Today I uploaded my main image onto the computer. I then used Adobe Photoshop to cut around my main image for my front cover using the lasso tool because I was unhappy with the backdrop behind my subject.
Thursday 16th October
I worked on the layout for my front cover today by adding the title of the magazine, the cover lines, the price sticker and the bar code. I followed the list of codes and conventions that I had made previously in another lesson to help me.
Friday 17th October
I made adjustments to my front cover because the colour scheme didn’t make it stand out and I didn’t have enough cover lines so it made the front cover look bare. I improved it by adding more cover lines and I used one of my images which linked with the main image as the background, but I changed the opacity so that it was slightly transparent and didn’t draw attention away from my main image and the coverlines. After that I began working on my contents page.
Monday 20th October
I made my contents page look more attractive by changing the fonts so that the key words were bigger and bolder and I also added page numbers to link the images to the content.
Tuesday 21st October
Today I made the final touches to my front cover and contents pages for the preliminary exercise. I also started my evaluation.
Here are the finished products.
Thursday 23rd October
Today we discussed the connotations of each colour.
We made a list of what each colour meant to us, here is what we came up with:
Red: - anger, passion, love, lust, danger, stop, heat, fire, violence, blood, heart, roses, hell, the devil, murder.
Blue: - calm, sad, peaceful, cold, sea, sky, ice, ink, tranquillity, tears, water, depression.
Green: - nature, go, fresh, mint, land, summer, grass, illness, infection, countryside, recycling, environment, healthy, envy.
White: - pure, virginity, marriage, clinical, clean, snow, Heaven, peace, sterile, emptiness, cold, angels, light, death.
Black: - death, Halloween, Emo music, Mosher, bats, metal music, dark, depressed, evil, Goth, spiders, storm, funeral, stress, alone, seductive, sexy, mourning, grief.
We found that there were contradictions within each group for example red can signify violence and murder but it also has connotations of love and passion. This is because a colour takes on a particular meaning which depends on the context in which it is used and colours also mean different things in each culture. For example in our culture the colour green when used on a media product symbolises to us that the product is eco-friendly or it has something to do with the environment, recycling or being healthy.
This research was to help us when making choices for the colour schemes and to justify why we have used each colour.
Also in this lesson we looked at symbols and what they could represent.
Friday 24th October
The main theme of today’s lesson was the word ‘signify’ which linked back with the work from yesterday’s lesson.
We learnt about Ferdinand De Saussure the Swiss linguist who was the founder of the semiotic theory. His theory stated that sign= signifier + signified whereby the ‘signifier’ is the physical appearance of the sign for example; a cross is two lines that intersect one another and the ‘signified’ is the mental concept behind it, in this case the cross means wrong or kiss.
Our teacher then asked us to draw a tree in 5 seconds. Most of us came up with the same simple image which shows that we had a shared frame of reference and helped us to understand Ferdinand’s concept.
Also in this lesson we made a list of the code and conventions for a music magazine using our previous codes and conventions lists that we had made but adapting them specifically for the music magazine.
Codes and Conventions for a Music Magazine
- One image on the contents page is larger than the rest (main image)
- Use a 3/4/2 column layout
- Content- review of the year, gigs, about the bands, genre of music
- Pictures are different/ specific for each genre of music.
- Indie genre usually uses soft primary colours that are subtle rather than bright and in your face. The font is often black and white and in bold to make it stand out.
- Keywords- (bands/ artist) are in bold/larger/ in capitals to make it stand out.
- Black and white are usually the main colours with others depending on which genre
- The date (month and year) are above or by the contents heading.
We made this so that we would know what to include on our music magazine front cover and contents pages so that it would look realistic and follow the codes and conventions of a music magazine.
Wednesday 8th- 9th October 2008
Today each group in the class showed their range of camera angles that they had produced with the relevant caption and then we discussed whether the picture actually met the requirements such as ‘a high angle, long shot’.
Then we started the first few tasks of the preliminary exercise. I noted down words that I associate with school to help me come up with a title for my magazine. I am yet to decide which one to use, but so far I have come up with ‘Pen to Paper’, ‘Pen Tapper’, ‘Tasking’ and ‘Sticker’.
On Thursday I decided that I would call my magazine ‘School Colours’ and I also decided on the articles that would feature on my contents page.
Then we started the first few tasks of the preliminary exercise. I noted down words that I associate with school to help me come up with a title for my magazine. I am yet to decide which one to use, but so far I have come up with ‘Pen to Paper’, ‘Pen Tapper’, ‘Tasking’ and ‘Sticker’.
On Thursday I decided that I would call my magazine ‘School Colours’ and I also decided on the articles that would feature on my contents page.
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