Evaluation

First Draft of Magazine

Body Copy

In the process of creating my double page spread I have written a body copy of text to go along with my main article. Based on my research, I decided to use the Perpetua font for it, as virtually all magazines use serif fonts for their body copies, and this particular font looks similar to that used in the magazines I've researched. After a few re-writes and spell checking it, this is my final body copy that will fill up my double page spread.

‘Anyone can compose music.’ That is a very bold statement to make from such a young artist, and if it wasn’t for her amazing talent and critical acclaim, many would dismiss this claim. It is only after Vera tells us about her musical career so far and her plans for the future, that I truly understand what she means.  After asking her what it was like having her talent recognised, despite her lack of training, her eyes light up with enthusiasm. She is unique in that she didn’t have much in the way of formal training growing up, only  really being taught anything by a professional by September 2010 when she was fast approaching 17.

While there have been many great male musicians who have emerged from less than affluent backgrounds, few female composers as young as her and with her magnitude of skill spring to mind; let alone from poor backgrounds. In her own words she feels like ‘being recognised is about more than just people recognising me, but about women in general being given an equal footing in this art, regardless of their background’. She feels fortunate to have the chance to express that to us. Her face composes into an expression of relief, obviously eager to get that answer out as soon as possible.

Assuming this, I anticipate her answer to my next question ‘Is that what you aim to do then? Make women more noticed in modern composing?’ in response she looks perplexed ‘It’s what I want to do’, she says, as for why? ‘Yes, there is probably an aspect of increasing women’s influence in the musical world, but so far my experience with classical music has been performing and reciting other people’s music. Like anything, I want to take it to the next level by composing my own piece. Actually composing will definitely improve my understanding of classical music further, I love it, and I don’t just want to make music, I want to create it.’

Now I wear her formerly perplexed expression as she continues ‘do I want to take my music a step further in this way because I am a musician, or a woman? I don’t know, A little bit of both I suppose’. What strikes me most is the duality of her answer, which leads to a discussion between us about how there is something of a tightrope walk when you are an influential woman in any form of art. Ultimately, she smartly puts it ‘I want to show people that women can do this too, but that’s not all I want to show them’.

Now realising this internal struggle of wanting to have a message of gender equality, without letting her gender become her most recognisable label, I ask to what extent she might reflect this in her music. She responds ‘Composers fight political battles with their music. One of my favourite composers of all time, Shostakovich, rebelled against the government through his music’.  We become briefly side-tracked, talking about the great Russian composer. She comments that the most remarkable thing about him was with what subtly his messages were embedded in his compositions, to which I can do nothing but agree. Returning to the question at hand Vera responds saying ‘I can only hope to emulate him once I get a chance at composing. My message will be a driving force at least in my first few compositions’. I am now beginning to understand what she meant by ‘Anyone can compose music.’

Gramaphone contents analysis 2

Double Page Spread Mock Up

Contents Page Mock Up

Front Cover Mock Up

Gramaphone contents analysis

Gramaphone double page spreads analysis

Gramaphone front cover analysis 2

After analysing this front cover (as well as the previous gramophone front cover I looked at) I realised that due to its unconventionality, I may not be able to draw much influence from this cover due to not only its unconventionality, but the complications involved in replicating its look when I come to create my final product. However I feel that it is still important to analyse this cover to serve as a contrast to the more conventional covers I have looked at, such as those of BBC Music, in order to broaden my understanding of the codes and conventions of classical magazines overall.

Gramaphone Front Cover analysis 1

BBC Music contents page analysis

BBC Music magazine fornt cover analysis 2

BBC Music double page spread analysis

BBC Music front cover analysis

Initial Font Ideas

When choosing fonts I  considered my target audience as well as my ideology (that being intelligent but approachable). Taking this into account, these are some of the initial fonts I found on DaFont.com and am considering using on the front page of my product.

Title Ideas

While initially thinking of names for my magazine, many Italian musical terms came to me, but after considering my target audience I thought it would be best to avoid the more obscure terms and stick to ones that most people would be familiar with. These were some of my initial ideas.

Symphony/Rhapsody/Melody- these were three of my first ideas as they are all fairly well known terms that you don't need to be a composer to know, yet are still directly linked to the classical genre. A symphony being an extended composition, a rhapsody being a composition that is divided into various episodes but flows freely, and a melody simply being a linear composition. The more I contemplated the less I liked all three of these titles, as while well-known they do still give of a little too much sophistication, to the point that I think it makes them sound intimidating (especially Symphony and Rhapsody) and on top of that, aside from Melody, they are a little long and I think a short, snappy title would be better. To top it off their meanings don't really hold any significance to my magazines ideology.

Muse- Muse was a name I briefly considered, and while it is snappy and approachable I find it to be a little vague as it could really describe any genre of music magazine. On top of that there are already 4 other magazines with this name.

Vivace- Vivace was a name I liked at first, it is an Italian music phrase meaning fast but lively. However considering I wanted a name that was recognisable and not intimidating I discontinued this line of thought.

Forte- Forte was a name I also liked initially due to the fact that while it is an Italian musical word, it is known by people who aren't particularly into classical music. On top of that its extremely short and easy to remember. My only quam with it as a title is that it didn't exactly translate into my magazines ideology, as all forte means is 'loud'.

Motif-At this point in time the name I like the most is Motif, for a lot of the same reasons I like forte. As it is very short, pithy and easy to remember, on top of that while it is an Italian music term it is used in almost every other art to describe a recurring theme in a piece of art. In classical music however it means a similar thing; a recurring figure in a piece that has an important characteristic and is meant to covey an idea in a condensed or quick way. In a way, this links to the ideology behind my magazine as it is about classical music, but in a more approachable way, it like a motif expresses big things (ideas or music) in a humble way. I would say this is most likely to be my final title.

Target Audience

My magazines target audience will be relatively young for a classical magazine. Specifically around mid 20's-30's or possibly even younger extending to late teens. They would enjoy both old and new classical music as my magazine will focus mainly on modern classical music. My target audience might also enjoy other genres of music like indie, rock or pop, therefor my magazine will assume that the reader is fairly familiar with other genres outside of the classical genre, for example; my magazine may make references to more modern bands or other modern things. Typically classical magazines are sophisticated in their design layout and ideology, and while my magazine would be somewhat similar using formal or fairly articulate language, I want to avoid it being intimidating to someone who enjoys classical music but maybe isn't initiated with all complicated classical terms. In a sentence, it will be intelligent, but approachable.

Magazine Terminology

Magazine key terms from rootntootn

Classical Mindmap

Along with my mood board, I have also created a mind map of things I associate with the classical genre to help me get a feel for what my final product should look like.

Cohens Moral Panic

The Moral Panic is a condition, episode, person or group of persons that emerge as a threat to societal values and interests. These people or episodes are build up as 'social devils' when the powerful groups that have influence over the media face troubled times, which often results in that group of people or event facing a lot of disapproval or hostility in public opinion. Social devil are often subject to stereotyping and are used as a scapegoat of sorts, to blame all the current problems of society on, even when they have little to nothing to do with the problem at hand (which they often don't). Dome examples of -social devils' built up by the media were football in England around 100 years ago, which was blamed as the cause of hooliganism. Bicycles were similarly blasted in the media in the 1890 as the cause of 'chaos and terror' in society. More recent examples include Video games, which have been blamed for a lot of societies problems since the 90's, and most recently the internet, which various arms of the media have claimed has skewered our values as a society.

My School Magazine

 This is my finished prelim task, a contents page and front cover for a school magazine. I created it using Adobe In-Design  and all the pictures (which I have taken myself as I will have to in my music magazine task) have ben edited using Adobe Photoshop. Now that I have some experience with In-Design, I can take the system into account when thinking about my music magazine

Mood Board

For my music magazines, I have decided to go with the classical genre. I realise that this is a niche market but it is a genre of music that I genuinely enjoy and feel is somewhat underappreciated in modern society despite the fact that their are many modern classical composers such as Ludvicio Einuodi , Hans Zimmer and André Rio who are still active in their writing of great music. To give myself ideas for a magazine of my chosen genre, I have created a classical mood board composed of things I associate with classical music.

In-Design

In preparation for my prelim task, on top of Photoshop, I also familiarised myself with Adobe In-Design . During my practice I mocked up a double page spread for a fictional article on the Arctic Monkeys. In-Design is the very system that a lot of professional magazine publishers use, so if I want my media productions to look as authentic as possible, its important that I get used to the system. As shown in my mocked up double page spread below, it allows for things such me to better control the gutters, fit pull quotes in-between two bodies of text, and other small details that add up to make an article look more convincingly authentic.

Deyes High Newsletter Analysis

In preparation for my prelim task I have analysed my schools newsletter. From my analysis, overall the layout of the front cover is poor, in that it fails at grabbing the readers attention.

Femenist theory

Feminism and feminist theory is important in media as the media is very influential in our view of women. Laura Mulvey ,a British feminist and film theorist, developed the 'Male Gaze' theory, the theory that Hollywood assumes that the audience is masculine and then based on that assumption, portrays women in the media in a way most appealing to that audience. There are two concepts that come into play when women are portrayed based on the Male Gaze, the first being objectification, in which women are portrayed merely as object of desire, or something controllable, and the second is narcissism in which we want to be like or identify with the character or icon in the media.
Miley Cyrus is a good example of a figure in media who has been effected by the male gaze as her image in the media has transformed to become more appealing to the male gaze.

Ideology

In media, and ideology is the concept behind a piece of media which is presented through semiotics. The Ideology behind a media product is important because it not only conveys what the product it is about but also conveys the target audience. Due to this ideology will be very important in both my music magazine and prelim task as by effectively showing my ideology in my products they will appeal to my target audience. As an example of an ideology, for my preliminary school magazine I think the ideology I would like to convey is that Deyes High is a modern school, with a range of modern and diverse facilities. To convey this ideology I will need to have lots of pictures showing the diversity of facilities, as well as incorporating a modern look in the design and layout of the magazines through connotations in things like the font and colours.

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and what they mean, a sign being something that represents something other than itself. It is very important to understand Semiotics when creating  magazine, as they indicate various things about a given sign I might use such as who it is most appropriate for and how it would make them feel. There are three different types of signs, symbols, indexes and icons. A symbol is a sign representing something that it has no contextual link to such as numbers or letters. An index is a sign that while not directly signifying the signified, it does contextually, such as a skull signifying danger. Finally an icon directly represents what it is signifying, such as an image of a bird which directly represents a bird.

Photoshop

In preparation for my music magazine production task, I have familiarised myself with Photoshop. Photoshop is an Adobe System which allows you to edit photos, and will be important I this task as Photoshop is often use to edit photos in the magazine industry, s learning Photoshop will help to authenticate my product.

These first two images I have used a simple crop tool on. The crop tool, while simple, will be useful in the production of my blog, as it will allow me to better centre photographs on what I think I important.

On the two picture above, I have edited the lighting to make the footballers more clearly visible, again this will be useful if any of the photographs I want to use are not as clearly visible as possible

On the images above I used the spot healing tool in order to airbrush the photo and make it look more appealing to the reader. Airbrushing inparticular is extremely prominent in music and fashion magazines, so its important that I learn to use this tool as convincingly as possible, fortunately I found the tool fairly easy to use.

Finnaly, I used the clone stamp tool on the images above to remove all the bottles on the shelf except one. Like the spot healing tool, this will be useful in removing any objects I don't want in a picture to get the exact image I want. Also like the spot healing tool, this tool replaces any unwanted images with replications of the background, so when using it I had to be careful and use various diffrent areas of the background when altering the image to prevent the background from reapeating itself which would look unnatural and unauthentic.

Questionnaire

About me

Before I begin research or planning I’d like make a post about some of my favourite trailers, music videos, etc. , to give insight into the type of media I enjoy.

This first link is to the music video for ‘Melancholy Hill’ by the Gorillaz. The Gorillaz are one of my favourite artists partly due to their heavy emphasis on the fictional characters and animation outside the music, and the Gorillaz music videos reflect that well. I also like how their music videos chronologically transition to one another, creating sort of an over-arching storyline, as this one does after their previous music video for 'Stylo'. But as it stands on its own, 'Melancholy Hill' is still one of my favourite Gorillaz songs and my favourite of their music videos.
 

The second link is to a trailer for the film ‘Only God Forgives’ which was released in cinemas not too long ago. I haven’t seen the film yet but I love this trailer, due to the surreal vibe it gives by combining the violent visuals with oddly gentle music, as well as the art-house style in general.

A video game that I recently discovered and particularly enjoy is ‘Dark Souls’ for the PS3 and Xbox 360.  It is a role playing game (RPG) that is unconventional in that it has more of an emphasis on actual gameplay than a deep story. I also like its creative art design which gives it plenty of atmosphere despite the lack of dialogue, and harsh but rewarding difficulty which is uncommon in the modern gaming industry.

http://www.metacritic.com/
The third link is to  the website 'metacritic' that I frequently visit. It offers reviews on films, TV shows, games and music, and similar to the website 'rotten tomatoes' each score is determined by the average score it is getting from other reviewers of the given medium, meaning it gives a general consensus from critics.

By posting this I hope I have given a little more insight into the genres and styles of media I enjoy, which may reflect in my work

Introduction

This is my AS media blog. During this cource I will produce a front page, contents page and double page spread for my preliminary school newpaper , aswell as a front page, contents page and double page spread for a music magazine. All of these items, as well as any reaserch and planning or other tasks will be posted to this blog.