Research and Planning: Music Magazine Analysis

Genre
The genre of this magazine is a rock style.  This is one of the first magazines that I will be looking at to help me get ideas for my own magazine.
The main thing that I have noticed is that on a music magazine is that when a band is on a front cover, the lead singer is at the front of all the pictures, even in the smaller pictures, the lead is at the front of them. Paramore is one of a few successful bands with female members in so they have made this there main USP (unique selling point) by putting her at the front. 
The attitude that they are coming across with is the lead singer is at the front again in a quite strange way, with the rest of the band behind her being calm and cool. Again most of the band are wearing quite bland colours, but the lead singer is sticking out with a different colour jacket to everyone else. 
Layout
You can tell that the magazine is meant to be for the rock audience, due to the colour seem being plan and simple colours.
The main image that is one the front cover is a medium shot, if the camera was a bit more back then it would have being close to a long shot.
The background of the image for this is a plain black background so there is full concentration on the image.
All the colours that are on the magaizne all stick out from each other, example there is pink in the background so to make the text stand you it will be in either pink or white so the text is easy to read.  Also the text box's/ stories are all over the place to give a un organised effect.
Representation
They way that the main image has being taken is the lead singer at the front looking happy and the rest of the band just looking normal, this again is showing the importance of the lead singer, she is the main concentration for all the readers of this magazine. The lead singer is doing an interesting pose and is looking happy, but as well as that the other members are all close together to show how close the relationship between all the members.  Even though the other members aren't doing anything interesting, they still look happy, and calm. 
Media Language
The main image is at eye level to make it look like you are looking right at the band, the singer is at the front of the image, just like she is on stage she is the front woman so to show how important she is, she is put at the front of the mid shot.  The lighting used looks more like the use of nateral lighting, to give it a real effect. 
For some of the other stories they have used close ups just to fit the images on the front cover, also to show the emotion on there faces.

Research and Planning: Semiotic Collage

This is the collage that I created to help me with my music magazine that I will be making.  I have brought together a mixture of pictures from my favorite bands, logos and pieces of text that have being took from magazines a-like.
 Three things that I have found.

•  The use of dark is a must for a rock music magazine.
•  When in a band photo, lead singers almost always go at the front of the shot.
•   Instruments are used a lot as props.

Semiotic

The study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior; the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing.

Research and Planning: Shot type Research

These are my types of research that I have done.

Research and Planning: Evaluation of Magazine

I do think that the font sizes are the right size, they are not to big that they get in the way of the picture, but they are also a good size so you can read the information.  Also the colour of them stand out from the background for example; when it is on a darker colour, I have changed it to a white so it will stand out more than it being black. 
I have stuck to the colour rule because it makes the whole thing look professional and it also make it a lot easier to read and understand due to all these colours aren't jumping out at you when you are trying to read it.
Yes you can tell that the contents page and the cover are from the same magazine. I have kept with the same font style and the same colour style to make everything look the same.
I think the pictures that I have took look quite good, the quality of them look good, they isn't lose pixels around the sides of the pictures. This is cause at times I will have took 2-3 try's to get the picture that I think looked the best.  I think the medium close up on the front cover is a good picture, I got a good solid background so it would easier to cut out all the background in one go. Also it is above the waste so is classes as a medium close up.  I also believe that the images that have being took are relative to the magazine that I am doing.  They are pictures of college students either in or around the college grounds.  
I think that there could be more stories to fill up the cover page. But at the time I was struggling for ideas and I didn't want to fill up the page with a lot of text, I wanted to keep it as simple and clear as possible.
                                       I do believe that at a quick glance, you will be able to tell that it is a magazine, it has things like a 'Mast Head', 'Bar code' and stories on the front cover.  It meets the classic style of a magazine.   

Research and Planning: Completed College Magazine

This is my final version of my college magazine.

This is the final version of my contents page.

These are the pictures that we took for our college magazines.

Research and Planning: College Magazine Progress

This is my collage magazine as of today.  I will carry on working on my magazine as the week carry's on.

Research and Planning: Contents Page Progress

This is the progress that I have made on my contents page.  I will carry on with this in the next session.

Research and Planning: Cover and Contents Draft

These are the drafts for my front cover and my contents page that I did.  I did these so I could get a quick idea on what they would look like.  I annotated parts to remember what goes where.

Research and Planning: Font Styles

Research and Planning: College Magazine Interviews

From interviewing these people, we have found out many things that will help me out when doing my magazine covers.  From our research we have found out that:
People think that college is all about getting a good education, meeting new people and learning new things.
People want to read about things that are to do with common interest of collage student, some of them including what is going on around the college, lads like to read about football going on in college other football like the Premier league and things of that nature. 
People will only be willing to pay a high amount if they are paying for a big magazine, they don't want to be paying a lot for a little magazine.  But the average amount people are willing to pay for a magazine is just under £2.
Some peoples hobbies include listening to music, watching TV, Football and doing things like Meeting with friends, playing football.
There is a wide range of peoples favorite colours, people seem to like the primary colours e.g, Red, greens, purples.
Not many people like to read magazines, but a few people like to read magazines like Kerrang, Q and other popular magazines. 
These questions will not only help me with my college magazine, but will also help me understand what type of questions that I could be asking to do with my music magazine.

Research and Planning: Medium Close Up Examples

 

These are two examples of a Medium close up.  The shot isn't just showing the head, it shows a lot more of the body.  Most of the time, the shot will just be manly just under the shoulders, but the shot can be show the waste and at a distance that isn't to close to the camera.

Research and Planning: College Magazine Analysis

The magazine has a masthead which reads College so it is targeted straight to the target audience that it is aimed for.  There is a Slug-line right under the masthead which is a common thing to have on a magazine.  This cover has a medium/close up of a man who is a college student, we can tell this by the fact that he has books in his hand which have the text "Law" which is a common topic that you can be take in college.  The main picture is the man himself.  The main colours for this cover is black, a yellow/green and white.  This is a typical colour scheme being used.  The stories that are around the page are stuff that college people will want to her, for example" Make money on Campus" that is something that most people will want to know about.  There is also a bar-code in the bottom left corner.  This is something that almost that almost every magazine has.  The date and issue number is also under the bar-code.    

Research and Planning: Film Review

To produce this review I gave my document some borders to keep everything even and all in the same place.  I then selected my text and split it into to separate parts and made it in to two different columns to give it a typical looking magazine/news paper style.  I then added a title so it is clear what the review is about. After that, I changed the text and title to white and the background to blue, I did that by adding a rectangle, sending it to the back so that all the text could be seen.  Finally I added my image by saving it onto the desktop then placing it in the document and then putting it to the size that i wanted it.  Then when I exported the file to a JGP so I could upload this document. 

Research and Planning: Film Poster

I have mixed a image from family guy with the poster for the Godfather.  I did this by inverting the face of him and moving his cut out face into the place of where the original head was.

Research and Planning: Photoshop Challenge

I started by selecting a text box and typing in the text that is in red.
Then I changed the font size and style.
I then changed the text to red and put it in there center of the page. 
And i also give the text a drop shadow effect. 
Then I went onto the internet a selected a picture of Jack Black and then changed the colour of his hair from dark brown to yellow.
And then to finish, I added a black border around the image of Jack Black which faded out as it goes away from the image of him. 

Research and Planning : Introduction to Photopshop

This is the first time that I have used photoshop.  To make my CD cover I got a lot of different images and got the parts of the image that I wanted and put them all together to make this CD colour. I also make the horn a much darker colour to make it look more realistic.  I added text to make it personal to me.  I also rotated the CD to make it look a different.  Also I changed the colour of the CD.  I also added waves to the background just to make things look different to everyone else.

Research and Planning: Skin Tutorial

I used the spot healing tool to cover up all of her spots to make her skin look more clear.  I used the brush tool to add stuff like lipstick, eye shadow and some blusher.  I also made a copy of the layer and changed the Opacity of the image to give the skin more of a glow.  I also used the brush tool to change the colour of her hair from blond to the colour green.  I also make the background colour a lot darker so the girl stands out a lot more than before i started editing the way that she looks.  

Research and Planning: Intro to Photoshop

This was the first bit of getting used to photoshop that we did, we used many different effects for each part if the CD cover that you see above this text.