Reminder

A reminder that your Music Mag blog must clearly show your candidate number at the top.

The coursework cover sheet has changed.

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be well prepared. On the 21st April, the exam board slightly changed the coversheet forms.

You need to long in here

fill out your correct details, print out & give to me.

Have you done any work?

Have you done any work this holiday? If not, now is the time to get cracking. Remember your final evaluation of your music magazine must be uploaded to your blog for the first week back. You have to make as much use of audio visual techniques as possible, whilst ensuring your points are made clearly and succinctly.

Structure for Blog

It should look like this:

1. Intro (optional podcast)
2. Final Version of Magazine
3. Evaluation
4. Audience Feedback
5. Avatar response evaluation (if you did one)
6. Planning and research posts

Feedback on blogs:

1. Evaluations need to have images and research referred to explicitly. This means embedding and annotating images. You may find this works best as a powerpoint.
2.Don't include unedited, uncommented on images for the examiner to scroll through, put them in a powerpoint.
3. Consider your question on new technology, not only does it refer to your product but also to how magazines are distributed, eg the rise of online versions, how will this owrk in the future?
4.Look back at the powerpoints we went through on media language, namely mode of address, house style, brand, product, USP, graphology, typography, all of these sort of terms should be mentioned in your evaluation, most of you lack media specific terminilogy and your references are too wishy washy.
5. Give quotes and specific examples all the time!
6. Name, pricing and frequency should be mentioned.

Final evaluation of Music magazines

Now you have had some distance from your publications. Try to evaluate it with fresh eyes. Your focus group written comments need to be collated and responded to.
1. Upload the pages to your blog and comment on how you feel about them.
2. Edit your video footage, include some still images of your product to put in as transitions into your project. The way to do this is to save the images as JPGs, put into iphoto then open up from within iphoto from the camera symbol button. (this is a short cut to iphoto).
3. You can film extra footage to improve this. You could interview people who are exactly your intended target audience, or someone who isn't, like your parents or older siblings. You can film yourself talking through the magazine, using the evaluation questions as a structure. In fact if you do this thoroughly this can take the place of a more formal written evaluation.
3. Once you are happy with your edit, click the 'share' button at the top of the screen. This will take you to a shortcut to You Tube. You will need a You Tube account to log in, add your film to You Tube then use the embed code to put it in your blog. Job done!

Here are a couple of very interesting articles about Youth Culture. Read this and think about including some of the points to raise the tone of your response.
Where Have All the Pop Tribes Gone: The Guardian


Flexipop's History

Cover Sheet

You must click here and download & fill out the cover sheet to accompany your magazine.

Work coming up

1. Blog, Product and Evaluation all completed and uploaded by Tuesday 12th January.
2. When we return you will go straight into your mocks. The Media exam will be on Wednesday 6th January in the morning. You need to go to the conference room as you will be watching a 5 minute extract from a TV drama and answering questions on the

Camera Angle, Shot, Movement and Composition

Mise-en-Scène

Editing

Sound

and an element of Representation.

Evaluation Questions

Each candidate will evaluate and reflect upon the creative process and their experience of it. Candidates will evaluate their work electronically, this evaluation being guided by the set of key questions below. This evaluation may be done collectively for a group production or individually. Examples of suitable formats for the evaluation are:
A podcast
DVD extras
A blog
A powerpoint
In all cases, candidates should be discouraged from seeing the evaluation as simply a written essay and the potential of the format chosen should be exploited through the use of images, audio, video and links to online resources. Marks should be supported by teacher comments and may be supported by other forms such as audio or videotaped presentations.

In the evaluation the following questions must be answered:
•
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
•
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
•
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
•
Who would be the audience for your media product?
•
How did you attract/address your audience?
•
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
•
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Research and Planning may be presented in electronic format, but can take the form of a folder or scrapbook at AS Level only. Centres should ensure that blogs or other online evidence are easily accessible for moderators, preferably through a central hub or gateway with links to the work of each individual candidate properly signalled with candidate numbers.

Friday 4th December

I really think this point needs emphasizing:


'There should not be a dominance of images of the same subject amongst the four original images'

What this means is you need to take photos of more than one person.
You may want to consider your front page featuring a different subject than your double page spread (although you don't have to if it features a band).
You will have to do more than one photo shoot.

At this point in time your first draft of your front cover should be complete. You can always come back to it and reflect on it later, its better really if you do.

You should be starting on your double page spread and consider whether you need to take more photos this weekend. You don't have to use the SLR camera, an ordinary camera will be ok, a mobile phone camera won't be good enough quality.

You should aim to have the double page spread complete by the end of of this coming week & start on the contents page.

A reminder of how many images you need to use from the exam board:

Found photos may not be used as part of the project; all photos must be original.
There must be a minimum of four original images included across the pages of the magazine.

Original images should be included as part of the planning evidence and the process of changing them should be evidenced (e.g. through screengrabs of Photoshop process).

There should not be a dominance of images of the same subject amongst the four

There needs to be more attention to mise en scène in the construction of images.


Be careful you fulfill this criteria!

Here is the finished version

Xtranormal

Here is the movie whilst in the process of being rendered. You can see how the computer starts with the very basic outline then adds to it.

Double Page Spread

You need to start thinking about the approach you are going to take for your double page spread. Consider:
Images
Graphology
Copy
Representation
Language.

You also need to consider and respond to the following question:
What role do music magazines have in the establishment of youth subcultures?

Double Page Spread

View more presentations from shsgmedia.

You may respond in any form you like. You could try this application out. Xtranormal ( only works on Windows at the moment), if you don't like recording your own voice. You simply type in your text and it turns it into a movie!

Deadlines

Your Magazine must be complete and printed off by Monday 14th December.
In the week before we break up there will be opportunities for focus group feedback which will be filmed and you can edit and upload it into imovie.

You can update your blog and do the evaluation over the Christmas holidays.

Friday 27th November

Cover Pages

The front cover is a persuasive selling tool. They attract and motivate audiences to purchase the product.
They go to great lengths to make their magazine jump out from the shelf & establish their own identity to cultivate a brand loyalty.
The front cover shapes readers expectations and reader are invited to join communities with distinct cultural identities.

We read from left to right and from top to bottom. So the prime position for important info is on the top left hand corner.

Consider the layout and graphology ( the size & shape of the font) & colours used.




Titles can signifiy a particular genre. eg 'Mojo', 'Smash Hits', 'Kerrang' & titles can have connotations.

Read this PP for more info

Music Mags

View more presentations from shsgmedia.

Friday 20th November

Today we looked at this powerpoint and read the article, 'Analysing media Language In Magazines'.
For homework, you need to choose a double page spread to conduct a close textual analysis on.
Pointers are given at the end of this powerpoint, for aspects to analyse.
This should be up on your blog in time for Wednesday 25th Novembers lesson.
You should also have all your photos for your music magazine taken, you may now work on your magazines in Miss Aldridges lesson as the aim is to have this project finished before Christmas.
Remember to keep uploading drafts, ideas, podcasts etc, you should have several updates each week.

Music Mags A2

View more presentations from shsgmedia.

Work to be completed by Friday 13th November.

Points one and two must be completed by the end of the week, point 3 is on going.

1. You must have your student magazine front cover and contents page completed and uploaded to your blog.
2. You should also record a podcast or video commentary to explain your decisions and how you believe it adheres to conventions you identified in your research. Who exactly is your target audience and how have you targeted them?
3. When this work is completed you need to start researching the music magazine industry and start thinking about what genre you will focus on.

Points to consider:

Analysing Magazines

Some useful prompts to think about when analysing magazines.

Consider the title of the magazine: Why is it called that?What are the significant words?What connotations do they have?
The publisher of the magazine: Who publishes the magazine? What other magazines (if any) does it publish? What other media interests (if any) does it have?
How much does the magazine cost? How often is it published?
What is its circulation/readership?Does the magazine have a website?

The target audience for the magazine: What type of reader is it targeting?
How do you know this (i.e. types of articles and advertisements)?
How does the reader ‘interact’ with the magazine?
The cover of the magazine: Analyse the images on the cover; the types of facial expressions, body language, clothing, etc used.
What do they tell us about the target audience for the magazine? What else appears on the cover?
Why are particular typefaces, types of graphics, colours, etc used? Why are particular items in the magazine featured? Does the cover look similar to other magazines? If so, why? If not, how does it look different?
The ‘style’ of presentation of the magazine:What do you notice about the magazine’s presentation? Does it look cheap or expensive? How does it compare with other similar magazines? How does it use colour, print style, artwork, etc, to convey an overall effect?

The ‘mode of address’ of the magazine: How does it address its reader? How and when are readers allowed to address the magazine?What types of articles/features does it contain? What subjects are covered?
The advertisements that appear in the magazine: What are the main types of products being advertised? What is their price range? Who are they aimed at? Why are these products featured particularly? How do the models featured in the advertisements relate to the target audience?

Representations in the magazine: How are men and women represented? (look at both the images and the text) re there conflicting representations? If so, why is this? How do these representations relate to readership? Is there a limited range of representations for men and women? If so, what are they and why?
What groups do not appear in the pages of the magazine? Why?
Are celebrities featured in the magazine? If so, what kinds of celebrities? Why have they been chosen? The competition for the magazine: What other titles are in competition with it?What are their circulation/readership figures? How much do they cost? What are the similarities/differences?
and finally...
What do you think are the reasons for its popularity (or otherwise)? What does the magazine offer its readers? What ‘values’ or ideologies are implicit in the magazine?

You need to analyse in depth at least 3 contrasting genre front covers and double page sreads. You should also conduct a case study into one 'brand'.

Work to be completed by Friday 16th October

1. Reader Profile for your student magazine. Try putting it into imovie and adding music to it.
2. Flatplan suggestions for your front cover, do a couple and show them to your focus group, ask them which they think is the best & why, that is what they are there for!
3. Take photos for your student magazine.

Upload all of these to your blog. You can always take a photo of your flatplans and upload them that way if you cant scan.

This is the exam boards definition.

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program.
Main task: the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine (if done as a group task, each member of the group to produce an individual edition of the magazine, following the same house style). Maximum four members to a group.
All images and text used must be original, produced by the candidate(s), minimum of FOUR images per candidate.

Reader profiles

Reader profiles are used by the media industry to promote their product to potential advertisers. They are also really useful to writers and contributers to assist them in targeting their features to ensure they are of interest to the target audience.

You can often download the information from these magazines that give you loads of info about the target audience but you have to look carefully for it. The info is usually found in the advertisement and/or marketing section and is sometimes labelled 'media pack'.

Observer

OK Magazine

NME

You will find a good example here of a mood board for a reader profile, it would be very useful for you to design your own.

Note how the magazine publishers refer to their products as 'brands' or as Wikipedia would say, "cultural accessories and personal philosophies'.