Evaluation - Question 5

Question 5 is: 'What did you do to attract/address your audience?'

Firstly, my front cover model is staring straight into the camera which attracts the readers attention. I also used large headlines on my front cover and double page spread to draw the readers eye. My colour scheme is also suited towards my target audience. The name for my made up artist on the front cover is two names from famous rock artists so this attracts my audience as many of my target audience said they what attracts them most to the magazine is an artist they like on the cover.

Evaluation - Question 4

  Today, I answered question 4 of my evaluation “Who would be the audience for your media product?” this question has been answered repeatedly through the course of my project because my media product is aimed at my target audience. Therefore my magazine is targeted at teenagers and young adults between the ages of 14-25 who are interested in the rock genre.

Evaluation - Question 3

For this question I looked at two different media institutions:  Bawer Media Group and Team Rock. BMG publishes Kerrang and Q some of the biggest music magazines out there and they reach over 19 million adults every week. Then there is Team Rock who publish Classic Rock and Metal Hammer, so this company is more specific to my genre.  

Evaluation - Question 2

   Today, I answered question 2 of my evaluation. 'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'

None of the people in my magazine are over 18 and this is shown through the images I have used. This is especially shown in my double page spread where I have three teenagers shown and they are messing and not being serious like they are stereotypically supposed to be. They are also shown to be teenagers through their clothing choices. The girl is wearing jeans and a superman t-shirt which is common among teenagers. The boys are also seen wearing casual clothing. In the contents page there is also teenagers there and I’ve shown this by editing the hair colours of two of the girls. Bright coloured hair attracts more attention which is another stereotype of teenagers- that they want attention. Teenagers are also represented in the dialogue in the article as the speech is casual and there are some swearwords.

My magazine isn’t gender specific, but it does have mainly girls included in it. This is because more males tend to listen to the rock genre, so by including females on the cover it makes women feel more included. But the women shown in my magazine don’t fit the gender roles. The two girls featured in the main photos for the double page spread and the front cover both have short hair, which isn’t very stereotypical. They also wear quite masculine clothes. The two males shown in my magazine aren’t shown in serious poses, which is what magazines usually do. Their dialogue in the article shows them tagging behind the female member in their made up band ‘Heart over soul.’

Evaluation - Question 1

Today, I answered question 1 “In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”The main conventions my magazine uses are:

•          Blocky style contents page

•          Name of magazine being behind artists head

•          Use of accent colours

The main conventions my magazine develops are:

•          Lowercase text instead of uppercase on my front cover

•          Blurbs for only a couple of articles on the contents page

The main convention my magazine challenges are:

•          Having a solo artist on the cover instead of multiple band members.

Update

Now that I have finished my magazine, I need to evaluate it. To do this I will produce a powerpoint presentation and answer seven questions to do with my magazine. The deadline for this is May 7th.
So over the next few weeks I will be answering the questions briefly on my blog.

Final Cut

Today is the deadline for the final cut of my magazine. So here it is:

I am really happy with how this turned out. Compared to my final cut; I got rid of the header of the top, added more plugs and changed some of the fonts.

The contents page is the page I am least happy about, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out. I didn't change much of this page compared to my rough cut; all I really did was finish it off.

This is the page I am most proud of. I just changed some fonts around and added some captions but more or less, it is the same as my rough cut.

Update

Today all I did was finish off writing the article headlines and blurbs for the contents page. I researched real band names for the headlines.

Update

I finished my front cover today. I added another poster to the 'poster pullout' plug, as I felt two wasn't filling up enough space. I also make a 50 years of rock plug inspired by a plug from the Rock Sound front cover I looked at.

Update

Today I changed some of the fonts on my double page spread so they were easier to read. While I like the font I used originally, the new font makes the writing look a lot cleaner and easier to read. I just got rid of the font everywhere I used it as well.

Photoshop Process #6

I used this image as a poster on my front cover, and it is one of the photos I took for my double page spread. It wasn't suitable for my spread, but I really liked the photo so I wanted to use it in my magazine. I eventually decided to use it as a poster, but I needed to change the mise-en-scene a bit so the image wouldn't be the same as the circle plug which already has the same model. I started off with this image:

Then I edited it using the same process I did for my front cover photo.

Now I needed to change the mise-en-scene so it would't be so simular to my other front cover photo which has her in.

Then I brightened the image a bit more, and used the quick selection tool to select her t-shirt. Then I refined the edge and changed the colour using the hue/saturation tool to change the colour of the shirt to black.

Update

I also want to show the photoshop process of one of the poster on my front cover. Even though the picture is really small, it's one of my favourite photos that I took. So that blog post will be up tomorrow.

Photoshop Process #5

For the final photo of my contents page, which is the one of the three people from my double page spread, I had to edit it a lot. I couldn't find a nice serious (ish) photo of all three of my models, so I had to do some serious editing. I found this photo which I liked of Mark and Rowan:

But I needed Alex to be in the photo too. So I took this photo which I liked of Alex:

And I decided to edit him into the photo. 

This was a very complicated edit so I'll go though the process now.

I started off by editing the models separately, and just did what I do with every edit: selective colour, brighten image, airbrush, dodge and burn.

I started off with a background layer of grey.

I then placed the already edited image of Mark and Rowan over the top of this and positioned the framing so there would be room for Alex.

I then duplicated a piece of the background on a new layer to make the background look larger.

Finally I cut Alex out using a mask and placed him in the image. I adjusted the colours so the lighting would be the same on everyone.

Photoshop Process #4

I just remembered that I haven't shown my photoshop process for the other two contents page photos. So here is the one of Jess.

I started off by brightening the image and using the selective colour adjustment tool to add more warmth to the photo.

I then edited the background so it would be different from my other photos, as I shot the photo with the same background. I did this by using the dodging and burning tool.

I used a curves adjustment layer to change the background colour even more and then used an inverted mask to only apply that colour on the background.

Finally I airbrushed her skin and dodged and burned any areas of her face that I wanted to emphasis.

Update

I didn't have time to show you the photoshop process for my two other contents page pictures, so I'm going to have that as the blog posts for the next two days. The pictures in question are the 'Heart over Soul' photo at the top of my contents page, and the one of the girl with brown hair looking straight into the camera.

Photoshop process #3

As I said in my last blog post, the mise-en-scene for the photos I took of Hannah aren't very conventional. So here is my photoshop process for this image.

I started off with this as the original image, the main thing I wanted to change was the flower print on her shirt.

So I did this by blocking out the print in black and then dodging and burning in where the creases in the top would be.

I wanted to make her even more conventional so I decided to change her hair colour to pink. I did this by using the quick selection tool and selecting her hair and then I clicked 'Refine Edge' so I would get a more exact cut. I then added a curves adjustment layer to the selected area and changed the colour to pink. I also lowered the opacity of the layer so the colour wouldn't be as vivid.

The final edit I did to this image was adjust the colours, and I did this using a curves adjustment layer.

Photoshoot for Contents page #2

I needed one more image for my contents page to complete it, so I decided to use some test shots I took of my friend Hannah while I was waiting for my other friend Jess to get ready for her photoshoot. Many of these photos occurred while I was still playing around with the camera settings, but I really like the ones with a slightly long exposure as it makes her look like she's coming off stage. However her mise-en-scene isn't very conventional to my genre, so I will have to photoshop her hair and clothing so she fits in more.

Update

There isn't really much to publish on my blog, as I'm just finishing off my magazine. I will still be posting updates to what I am doing, but the posts will be less frequent as I have less to do.

Feedback #2

Continuing on from yesterdays blog post on the feedback I got for my rough cut; here are the things people said I could improve:

• Finish everything off
• Make some of the subheadings bigger
• Change the font of the quote for the double page spread
• Add a price, issue number and barcode to the front cover
• Add more plugs to the front cover