18th March 2009

In todays lesson we went down to the computer rooms again to create our music magazine for the main task. We are using photoshop to do this. Using our feedbacks from the preliminary task i am trying to make my music magazine better. When i had done the preliminary task i had little experience with using photoshop so i made the magazine with basic knowledge of photoshop, but now i have more experience with photoshop i am able to make the main task turn out better. I have made a mock up of the music magazines front cover (which will be posted up as soon as it has been scanned) and i am trying to follow the order of the mock up. when i had done the preliminary task i did not follow my mock up very well so i will try this time to follow the mock up that i have created.

I have taken a wide variety of images for the music magazine and have chosen out of the images what images i want to use in the magazine and what i don't.

It was difficult to find locations to take images as i could only take the images of people while i am at school as the people that i requied to take pictures of could only do this during school time. it was not easy to find good locations especially since it was a rock band.

These are some of the pictures i have taken. I had trouble taking these pictures because the lighting was not very good.

I like this shot that i have taken as the pose was very good. I thought that this would be good to use as my front cover image. I edited the background of this image using photoshop as it was not shot very well. The background has a white gap by the wall and it does not look very professional.

I put a Red and Black background on this image using photoshop. I used the eraser tool on photoshop to get rid of the back ground and the then used the magic wand to select the image and take it to a different background. This was very time consuming as i had to be very careful when using the eraser to to make sure that i don't erase the band members and i had to make sure that the erasing was smooth, so that it didn't look like it was cut out. I could have used the magic wand to select the whole image to take it to a different background without eraing but, when i tried it the magic wand had not selected the image very well, so i had to erase the background first in order to select it.

Ireally like this pose in the image as it had the whole rock style pose, but i cannot use it as one of the members eyes are closed.
I wanted to use this image as an album cover.

Instead of using the image above as my album cover, i have taken another shot, and have decided to go with this image as the pose is still very good. Again i am thinking of editing the background of this image. i am thinking of using this image in the double page spread of the magazine.

I have taken individual images of this group to put into the double page spread. I will be using all three of the images below to make my double page spread.

These pictures are of the main band OBLIVION.

16th March 2009

In todays lesson we have looked at the foundation porfolio- assessment criteria. We have looked at how the marking system works for this coursewok. Looking at this we have made ourselves a to do list that we should follow and try to keep to in order to complete our coursework by the deadline.

11th and 13th March 2009

On the 12th march we had started taking photos for our music magazines. in this leswson we had also got our feedbacks from ouir preliminary task. My feedback was that i needed to anchor all of my images, keep to the same font, check for grammer errors add more images on the contents page, and not have soo much yellow as soo much would not be used in magazines. i need to put more images on the front cover and need to put captions on the images.

13th March:
In this lesson we had talked about uses and gratification.

We have learnt that the basic idea of this theory is tat people consume the media because it fulfils a need. These needs serve as motivations for using media. We have learnt that there are four areas of gratification adn these are;

• Escapeism- this is getting away from 'real life', relaxing. this usually covers on of the senses i.e. video game is on so you don't hear the call for dinner.
• Personal realationships- the audience creates a relationship with celebreties, characters etc. They feel lilke they know them.
• Personal identity- creating an identity by copying artists and magazines, following trends etc.
• Surveillance- getting information about the world.

We have also learnt that with these gratifications there are also dangers. For example with Escapism the danger is that people can escape too much from the real world and can lose track of time. Another example is with personal identity. The danger here is that people can lose their own identity and fall into sterotypes, and people may become offended by those sterotypes.

6th March 2009

In this lesson we have started to lay out the foundations for the main task of the coursework. We went over what the task was, and what we need to do for it. We needed to choose a genre for our magazines, think about the audience, uses and gratifications, design features, what the contents should be like, images should be anchored and that all photos should be original. Also we will need to plan out our photos, how they should be shot, location, props and angles. For homework, we had to come up with our pitch for our magazine, thinking about the aspects mentioned above.

• For the genre for my coursework I have chosen to make my magazine a rock magazine.
• I have chosen to call my magazine ‘’Tune On!’’ as the name refers to music.
• My magazine will be based on a new upcoming band. I have chosen to call the new band ‘Oblivion’
  The target audience for my magazine will be male and female aged 15 to 24 year olds as rock magazines often contain strong language (swearing) and audience any younger would be inappropriate.
• The magazine has to contain a minimum of four images but I may have more.
• The colours that I will be using for my magazine will be red, black, green, and orange.
• The content of my magazine will contain things such as, interview with the new band, concerts and gigs that are coming up, information on instruments, stories about other bands- existing bands, free posters etc.
• The language I will be using will be informal but I am unlikely to use swear words for this coursework.

I have made a mock up for the front cover of my rock magazine and I will be uploading it on my blog as soon as it has been scanned onto my computer. =D

4th March 2009

In this lesson we had went into computer rooms again and we had researched about a different magazine and make a PowerPoint about it.
For the research I had chosen to research about Kerrang! Magazine. I chose Kerrang because for my coursework to do the music magazine I am going to base my magazine on rock music and Kerrang is a rock magazine.

From researching the Kerrang! I have found out:

• Kerrang! Is published by Bauer Consumer Media in the United Kingdom. It is edited by Paul Brannigan.

• The name refers to the sound made when smashing an electric guitar. Kerrang!
• The Kerrang magazine is published weekly and sells about 70,000 copies a week.

• Kerrang has a readership of 542,000

• It is aimed at people aged 15-24 years old

• Kerrang has male ratio of 60:40

• The Magazine costs £1.99 to buy.

• Kerrang appeals to individualists, who are sharp and fanatical about their choice of music.

• The magazine has bold images of a particular band at the front and also contains a list of other bands that the magazine talks about. In a list around the magazine. This draws reader’s attention, as they may see their favourite band on the front cover and may pick it up in stores to read about it.

• The colours that Kerrang! uses are usually dark but have a bold bright colour going around it to make it stand out and draw readers attention.

• It attracts readers with information on concerts and gigs soon to be on. They do reviews with images of the public. Readers may take interest in this to see what type of concerts and gigs will be coming soon. Others may also buy the magazine to see if their image is on the magazine.

• Readers of Kerrang! Magazines are quite loyal, and are less likely to buy other magazines over Kerrang.

I have included all this in my PowerPoint.

25th February 2009

In this lesson for the first half we had specifically looked at the dance magazine. The dance magazine was quite different and similar to what we had expected. the magazine we had looked at was ''mix mag''. We had expected the dance magazine to contain lots of bright colours, and the magazine had contained this. We had expected the magazines text to be a bit flirty, but it had contained a lot of information in its text and was not all that gossipy or flirty. We had expected the magazine to be aimed at younger audience but we were wrong in this. The magazine showed to be aimed at an older age range of 18 and above who like to party. The images within the magazine were of people mostly at clubs partying and drinking a lot of alcohol.
The magazine had contained things like images with glow sticks to emphasize the relation to dance which we had predicted it would. Overall due to the different targeted age range of the magazine which we had predicted to the real thing our view of the magazine was quite different.

During the second half of this lesson we had gone down to the computer rooms and had looked at the online version of the dance magazine.The online version of the dance magazine was very different from the print. the online version was more interactive andf focused specifically at DJ's. It also focused on things such as, fashion and DJ equipments.The colours on the magazine are different from the print. the colours are darker but it still had bold bright colours on things like the masthead.
overall the online version of the dance magazine focuses more on Djs unlike the print which focuses more on clubs and peeople partying.

Below is a scan of what we had looked at of the online version of the mix mag.

23rd February 2009

We have now finished our preliminary task of the school/ college magazine and have started our main task for a music magazine. In this lesson we were put into groups to discuss about four types of music magazines. We had talked about POP, Rock, Dance and Hip hop/ R&B. we had looked at the type of things we expected to see from these types of magazine.

22nd February 2009

I have now completed the preliminary task and below is the content and the front cover of the school magazine. I have used photoshop to complete the preliminary task and will continue to use photoshop to complete the main task.





Tis is the mock up that Charlotte and i had created in class.












I have changed the name of the magazine from the 'Gospel' to the 'Parabel'. Below is school magazine that i have created for the preliminary task.

My magazine had not turned out as well as i had hoped it would. I have little experience with photoshop and do not know how to use it very well.My magazine doesn't look anything like my mock up but hopefully for my main task i will have more experience with photoshop and can make the magazine look more like a magazine.

6th february

I was not in school during this lesson but i have done some catching up work. For the lesson that i had missed we had looked at The Quad and Newsman School Magazine. Below are scans of the work i have done on the quad and Newsman magazine. It also shows what i have learnt from it and the differenent types of things the quad and newsman magazine contain.