School magazine

My school magazine is based at sixth form pupils who are around the age of 16-18. I have chose to have this age range as my target audience as I am within the 16-18 category so I know what conventions they would expect along with what is appropriate. My school magazine is called 'School Life', I seen this as an appropriate masthead as straight away the target audience understand that this magazine is based at school pupils.

The colour scheme I have used is red and black. I chose this colours as my magazine is aimed at both genders within the sixth form environment  I chose red and black as they are colours which people may link with both genders. I didn't chose a colour like pink as stereotypically pink is a colour which is related to girls whereas my magazine is aimed at both boys and girls. You can straight away tell my magazine is aimed at sixth form pupils as one of the pieces of anchorage text says 'Which A-Level path you take?'. A-Levels are only something you do when you are in sixth form, so the target audience can understand what age range my magazine is aimed at.

On my school magazine I have got two images, one of the library with a range of A-Level textbooks on and an image of a sixth for student working within the library. Again this helps the audience understand the target audience.

Annotating a music magazine

I chose to annotate a Kerrang front cover when annotating a music magazine. I chose Kerrang as the genre of Kerrang is rock and that is the genre I'm looking to base my music magazine on. By annotating a rock magazine I can see the conventions used on a rock magazine and apply them to my own magazine.

Music genre research

The genre I have chose to base my music magazine around is rock. Within rock there are many sub genres such as metal, pop and scream. I have decided to chose pop rock as it goes out to a wider target audience. This will result in more people being able to read my magazine.

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated from 'rock and roll' in the United States in the 1950's. Rock was heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock was also lightly influenced by genre's such as blues and folk and incorporated influences jazz, classical and other music genres.

Within the music industry, rock is seen as one of the biggest genres as within rock there are many smaller genres, e.g indie rock and pop rock. Throughout the year there are festivals/concerts which only have rock music. An example of this is Download Festival, the fact that rock has its own festival shows it is a big genre within the music industry.

How to frame and take a strong photo

We recently looked at how to frame and take a strong photo. We also looked at creating our school magazine which represents the target audience. Within the lesson we looked at key words to do with photography such as key finder and composition. We also looked at how you should stage your surroundings when taking a photo e.g. lighting, camera position and pose. When taking a photo we also look at mise en-scene (what’s going on around the image) this includes things such as props, background, lighting and costume.

School magazine preparation

Our next lesson was to create a conventional school magazine to appeal to a specific target audience; we also had to understand the layout and purpose of a blog. When making our school magazine we had to look at:

·         Who is the target audience?

·         What conventions have been used?

·         Does the masthead represent the audience?
    Assess the colour scheme and pallet

·       

This is the start of my school magazine; you can tell it is aimed at people within sixth form at school. We can tell this through the masthead and the byline. Within the magazine I have kept a certain colour scheme which is red and black. The masthead does represent the audience as the masthead is ‘School Life’ and it is aimed at school pupils.

Camera shots and sizes

Our third AS Media lesson was looking at camera shots and sizes. The different types of camera angles are:

·         Low

·         Eye-level

·         High

·         Worm’s eye

·         Canted

·         Bird’s eye

The camera shots include:

·         XLS – Extreme long shot

·         LS – Long shot

·         MLS – Medium long shot

·         MS – Medium shot

·         MCU – Medium close up

·         CU – Close up

·         BCU – Big close up
     XCU – Extreme close up

How magazine's appeal to the target audience

In our second Media lesson we looked at how a magazine appeals to its target audience. We looked at how things such as the colour scheme and main image. We also looked at key words such as grabbed photo which is a photo which is not planned without a specific pose. We also looked at key words such as house style which means colours that are always used by that company e.g. red for coca cola. We can tell this magazine is aimed at a more ‘urban’ target audience, we can tell this through the clothes Chris Brown is wearing. Also Chris Brown does hip hop/RnB and rap music, this is also representative of the specific target audience.

Conventions of a magazine

Within our first A-Level media we looked at the conventions of a magazine and how it appeals to the target audience, we looked at things like the title, main image and the colour scheme involved on a magazine. We also learned key vocabulary to do with the course such as masthead, skyline and anchorage text. By analysing a music magazine I am able to identify what I need to put into my music magazine to make it as good as possible.

Introduction

This is my portfolio blog where I will be blogging weekly about the work and homework I am doing within my A-Level Media lessons showing my improvements and overall build up to my final task which is a music magazine.