Media Coursework

Friday, 31 March 2017

Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task. What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

I feel like I have honed my skills in Photoshop massively throughout this task.

Mise-en-scene and camerawork: In retrospect from my preliminary I have realized that my Photoshop skills were very limited starting this project. My preliminary was created to test my skills and attempt to create a baseline regarding my proficiency. I feel my camerawork and Mise-en-scene used in my final product has improved massively and has been performed to a much higher standard in comparison. I have learnt how to model and style my models to fit my magazine genre. In my preliminary magazine the models looked uncomfortable and out of place, no in my final product they give off an air of confidence and look in place regarding the genre they derive from. My front covers mise-en-scene was very limited and almost non existent. I had gone into the studio on a whim and decided I needed images. This resulted in my preliminary images to have little to no relevance and not having much thought put into. I wanted to advertise for pupils at the school for a school magazine, this meant I knew I wanted to use students at the school for the front cover however as I had limited knowledge on school magazines I had very little ideas for how to position my models and what to do with them. This is in contrast to my final product which has been constantly thought through and where mise-en-scene is at the forefront of my mind. I made sure the person I used as a model look natural in front of the camera and would remain in confidence instead of looking shy or awkward. My model is also wearing a band hoodie as to relate and draw in more readers interested in these genres of music. The model’s hair is also important, it is styled in a way popular and prevalent in more mainstream emo subcultures as an attempt to draw in a bigger crowd of following from around the country. This change in stylization shows explicitly the improvements made from my preliminary mock up in regards to the stylization of my models. During my preliminary I also had lots of problems with artificial light. I was only using one light to compose my images causing a dark grey shadowy effect when creating my magazine that I decided to incorporate throughout it. This in my opinion sets the wrong mise-en-scene for my preliminary product. It shows a negative, dark and unwelcoming approach to what should be a happy and welcoming school magazine. This was a big problem throughout my work, the use of black and white mean that shadows made everything. Shadows could change the tone of my images completely in no time at all. This was why I learnt the light manipulation tools in Photoshop, they helped my edit the mise-en-scene of my images to give them a calming and relaxed feel when complimented by the soothing blue of my colour scheme. This effect also allowed me to change the tone of other images, making them darker and fit in more with the punk and emo theming of my final product. My preliminary image was also a very basic pose with quite an off the cuff and random appearance. This gave my preliminary an unprofessional and unappealing look. My final product however was the divergence of this, it made use of leveling with the camera being lower than the subject to give the model an appearance of grandeur. This look of importance is a common trait in emo and punk album covers meaning that readers would notice similarities and want to buy the product as it is relatable and has traits common throughout the genre.

Text arrangement and editing: I learnt through my preliminary work that the text arrangement of my magazine is key towards its progress. In order for my product to be believable I needed the text arrangement to be natural and not look disjointed in comparison to standard magazines. I learnt this as my preliminary’s text was very limited with little in the way of product. My preliminary product used a default font from Photoshop. This font is quite recognizable and makes it so that my preliminary magazine would not stand out of be easily distinguishable from other forms of media. I altered this in my final product by using fonts especially selected for my magazine through a website called DaFont. This allowed my text arrangement to stand out and not blend in with other magazines on the market. The masthead and title font I used is reminiscent of the hand drawn fan-zine style prevalent through out the 80’s. This detail and care is what separates my preliminary from my final product. My preliminary has very little thought about marketing and audience profiling throughout whereas my final product has had all the fonts and page layouts meticulously selected to benefit my project and audience. I have also gone for a more minimal appearance regarding my final product, this gives my magazine a less cluttered approach and also allows the reader to fully digest information, getting a feel for the stylization and format of my magazine. On the other hand my Preliminary has a cluttered arrangement. This in my opinion gives my preliminary an unprofessional and messy appearance, letting readers disregard the information inside and not fully showing effort has been made and taken in order to create the highest product available. I have also realized that my preliminary helped me understand the correct layout of a magazine. My preliminary only includes 8 pages. This is obviously not enough for a genuine magazine free or paid. In my final product I had realized that a free magazine: although not having an extensive array of pages did in fact have to contain a baseline minimum of pages. Through reading fan-zines I noticed the average magazine only contained around 20 to 35 pages. This was my deciding factor when it came to my final product. I wanted to make my magazine a feasible amount of pages long creating a sense of realism and also showing I understood the conventions of the genre.

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Camera:

The camera I used for this was my Canon 40D with a Helios 58mm lens. This lens was created in the 1960’s and still holds up to this day competing with some of the higher range camera lenses on the market currently. I chose the 40D mainly because It was an easily accessible camera as I already owned it. However I also wanted to take advantage to of the 10.1 megapixel sensor and get the highest quality images possible from my magazine. My decisions regarding camera lens were mainly related to the fanzine structure, I wanted to use a vintage lens from the previous millennium as to create the same image stylization that was common throughout the late 70’s early 80’s. I also really liked the mid length of the lens at 58mm, this created a natural look as it was very similar to the normal field of human view so the subject was not distorted in any way leaving all features intact. The lack of any automatic features on this lens also meant that I had to increase my skills in light registry and learn how to correctly expose images without the help of the automatic features that come with the camera. I feel learning this also helped my magazine increase in realism as there was a lot of practical elements to my magazine, common throughout the years in which fan-zines were in their peak.

Photoshop:

Over the course of my work I have massively improved my Photoshop skills. Going into this task I had little to no knowledge on how to use Photoshop (as shown by my preliminary) an now I feel I can confidently manipulate images into a plethora of situations and to my desire. The version of Photoshop we use was CS6, Although not the most in date product it is still the industry standard meaning my skills learnt are directly applicable to real life situations. I mainly improved my skills of editing images by learning about blending, layer masks an adjustment layers. Now after completing my product I feel I have a high understanding of the functions in Photoshop an am able to complete most tasks to an extent.

Other Technologies:

I have also used multiple different websites and technologies throughout my coursework. I have used blogger constantly as it lets me consistently update my work and gives an easy way of tracking my progress through the constant log of posts made that I can scroll through. Blogger is also where my teachers have logged the work set for us meaning that it is a consistent way for us to know what we need to do consistently. I have also learnt how to use scribd to embed word documents onto my blog. Dafont is an extremely helpful website as a bank of thousands of different type faces all royalty free. This helped me browse font to use and ultimately enabled me to follow the themes of my based genre. As a result of this website I also have learnt how to apply new fonts to the Mac operating system, something I was unaware of until this task was set. I also learnt how to navigate and utilize websites suck as UK tribes which through this allowed me to efficiently set a baseline for my research and planning and find out more about my target audience directly. I have also used Dropbox, this software allowed me to upload images I wanted to use for my magazine directly without any loss of quality that may be achieved through using a website like Flickr that compresses images to within a certain scale. Dropbox also enabled me to research from home and upload any images or large files to use at school that could not be directly uploaded to blogger.

Monday, 27 March 2017

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

I attempted to attract my audience in a number of ways. I achieved this through my through researching regarding their attractions earlier in the project. The colour scheme, images used, model used and poses of my model all have extreme effect on addressing my target audience and creating a product that readers will look for with innovative and eye catching content.

My colour scheme of basic black and white accented with blue is the running theme of my magazine keeping a cool and calm atmosphere for my relaxed magazine. Through a Google survey I found that the blue shade was preferred by a male audience with blue connoting confidence and intelligence. This colour was therefore picked as to attract my primarily male target audience. This colour is also predominant throughout my magazine in an effort to keep my magazine connected through colour scheme and as I know this pleasing colour scheme will attract my target audience.

My use of images is also very coordinated to remain this calm yet punk effect. Most images have a border on them. as much quality and remain true to my eyes. This will appeal to my audience as the picture wont This rustic border of white or blue can show the confined nature of my magazine, yet the images are coming out of the border connoting the factor that my magazine is constantly pushing boundaries and will remain on the front of underground independent entertainment. The photos were taken on a Canon 40D with a Helios 44m-2 58mm lens. I decided to use this vintage lens (produced in 1960 in the USSR) as it could work at low aperture whilst remaining a reasonably large range of focus. I also wanted to get the ‘Boke’ of a slightly distorted background whilst remaining resistant to large amounts of flare. The use of a 58mm lens was also considered, originally I wanted to use a 30mm lens however I soon realised that that led to a distorting of the models facial features and did not remain with the original integrity. 58mm is close to the standard field of view for human eyes allowing my image to have a natural and photogenic appeal as not to distort my audience’s interpretation of my magazine. The clothing was also decided by me, I wanted the clothes to fit the genre of my music magazine. I did this by making my models wear stereotypical clothes related with the emo and punk genre like band hoodies, flannel shirts and Doc Martens. I do however feel my magazine should feature a more feminine aspect as there is very little appeal to the female demographic in contrast to other magazines. My use of images directly attracts my target audience for these reasons.

The reason I did not want to shoot in a studio was in an attempt to achieve a natural setting that would relate to my audience. The clinical white of the studio was very against the ideals of my magazine, I wanted to capture the natural side of my models and their band. This challenges the conventions of the big magazines like MOJO, Q, CLASH and FADER which rely on using primarily studio lit backgrounds which in my opinion does not allow me to relate to the images and instead gives the artists a manufactured look. This is not what I wanted to achieve; I wanted my band to seem relatable and rustic, not afraid to take risks. The way I achieved this was by shooting outside. This meant that extreme care had to be taken through my lack of artificial lighting, I could only shoot what natural light had offered me meaning I made sure to shoot at 12-1 most days for a week in an attempt to keep the light overhead with full-bodied images and vivid shadows. I think this will appeal to my audience as they will be able to appreciate the care that has gone into the photography throughout. My target audience will also be able to feel more connection with the natural environments over the clinical and over produced superficial nature of using a photography studio.

Over the production process I took a plethora of draft shots over multiple photoshoots equating to over 200 images, I chose the few used as an attempt to show off the range of distances and angles available for me to use and as an attempt to keep my magazine looking fresh and not just the same 3 shots in the studio over and over. This was an extremely challenging aspect of my magazines creation as it involved posing my models in natural ways without making it look forced or over produced. Most of my images have someone looking directly into the camera, this was to make a connection with the reader and to make the experience feel more personal compared to if the models were all looking into the distance away from the focus of the lens. I think this attracted my target audience as it allowed them to take the magazine seriously and also gave a professional approach and viewpoint regarding my magazine enticing people to come and read as they would respect the reviews and relate to the interviews.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product

My target audience are young adults aged around 16 to 25 mainly men with a female audience also who strive to be individual and love the social aspect of music. Through my research reading reviews and learning about the target audience of many bands I can tell that many listeners and fans are within this age range and therefore targeting my magazine towards this age range would be the most successful approach. I have also noticed that this is the age range where people are most likely to go out and see shows, this is why I have included sections in my contents page regarding upcoming shows and gigs. The average acceptance range to go to gigs is 16, this was a determiner when deciding the age range for my magazine as I wanted my target audience to be active within the music community and motivated to go and explore new bands and genres. My age cutoff at 25 I feel is the age where most people decide to settle down. After finishing University, 25 year olds would be more focused on getting full time jobs over going out and watching bands generally targeted towards the teenage audience. This is cutoff around the age most people try and settle down in life and generally start to become less sociable and start becoming more introverted and retiring. My magazine will try to appeal to both genders however through research I have noticed that there is not that much of of a female audience so I doubt there will be many sales from a female readership.

My magazine would be all about the scene and focusing on the characters and personalities of bands yet also gaining a more serious take on reviewing albums, gigs and songs in detail. I also realized that the clothing worn by the bands members was crucial to making the magazine believable and realistic and appeal to my target audience. I noticed the gap within the market for a free magazine targeted towards more niche punk and emo based music genres creating a perfect market for my product.

When creating and designing my magazine I kept my research and planning in mind in an attempt to ensure that all my work fitted the stylization and genre I was aiming my content towards. I made sure my models were clothed appropriately regarding the task and fit the genre of music I was attempting to portray throughout my magazine allowing the audience to relate to the magazine. The messy aesthetic of my cover model ‘Ethan Smith’ also connotes the unorganized and layered atmosphere regarding my genre, relating to my target audience. The positioning of my model towering over the cover image also follows the conventions of punk magazines with a confident appeal and aura surrounding the cover artist.

Name:

Rosie Sykes

Age:

Interests:

Listening to music, photography, playing guitar, going to gigs

Favorite Bands:

The Front Bottoms, Remo Drive, Pixies, Harlem, Brave Bird, Capt’n Jazz, Sonic Youth, The Velvet Undeground, Dads, Snowing, The Hotelier

Favorite Shops/Brands:

Urban Outfitters, asos, h&m, Zara, Second Hand shops, Pink Pidgeon

Favorite Magazines:

Negative Feedback, NME, Clash, Ray Gun, Beat, ID

Name:

Jay Cooper