Work Update

I am coming up to Christmas time and I am 4 months into my media work. I have really enjoyed it so far. I have learnt new and different things. I have learnt how to use photoshop for the first time and I am starting to get the hang of it. I have learnt a lot about the likes of feminism and ideology. I have learnt how to analyse a music magazine front cover. I have bought a real music magazine and over the next couple of weeks I will be analysing the front cover, a double page spread and the contents page. I will be posting these blogs shortly.

Introduction to Voki

Voki will help you out instead of reading all my text because it is much easier to listen to something than it is to read. Voki is a free educational tool that allows you to create a talking character. I will use voki to make my blog more creative and fun. I can also use voki to annotate over presentations and other blog posts.

College magazine contents page

MOCK UP MAGAZINE

This is a mock up of a magazine cover I made. I attempted to have a go at using my sixth form as the front cover. This task was a very good one and a good experience of using photoshop. Im still not 100% about using photoshop but I will get better the more I use it. The name "Da Cardinals" is the masthead on the cover. I got his name from our school name "Cardinal Heenans". The main headline is "Ofsted are back!"

Ideology

Ideology is considered to be social beliefs, visions and opinions that sums up how a person or a group such as a social class thinks, acts and understands the world.

A stereotype is a thought that has been created by a group of people.

Ideology applies to music magazines because in the way the music magazine is presented, is the ways the audience think and see it. e.g if the magazine is dark and has a man on the front holding a gun or a knife ands tattoos on his arms, you would automatically think that the magazine is about rapping.

                                                                              
  When you see this image, your brain automatically thinks this is a rap magazine because of its stereotype. The man is holding a gun to his own head, he is wearing a vest and he is covered in tattoos. We think this because we have adapted to seeing rappers in this image because real life rappers look like this.

Photoshop practise

 

Before and after

Positives of Photoshop

There are many reasons why you may want to learn and fully use Photoshop towards a very good standard and get the most from the hue range of things you can accomplish with Photoshop whether its being creative and expressing your creativity through Photoshop or using it as a source of profit in your life, these are just some of the things you can accomplish through Photoshop.
Here are a few of the main things you can accomplish through Photoshop:

• Create professional, beautiful graphic works
• Grow ability and even express your creativity
• An enjoyable profession and even burgeoning a career or hobby
• Enhance your portfolio
• An investment that will pay of in time through financial and personal fulfilment
• Increase proficiency and performance
• Seeing visual ideas and dreams come to life through your own work
• Becoming a creative graphics professional or image editor
• Meeting and exceeding certain job requirements
• Pride in your work and even self accomplishment
• Higher pay for higher quality
• Mastery of the software
• Being able to share the work you have made

Photoshop positives and negatives

In this blog I will be telling you the different aspects of using photoshop for a magazine.
Firstly, photoshop makes images look more attractive and this is better for the audience because it will help sell the magazine. Another positive thing is the woman or man themselves will feel better because they think they look better than they really do.
Some disadvantages when people see an unrealistic image of the man/woman, it can have a negative impact on how people see them in the real world. Another one is, it could have a negative impact on the man/woman because their face and body is being messed around with to look better. It also gives fans an unrealistic goal to look like that person on the front of the magazine.

Photoshop

I used Adobe Photoshop for the first time today. I know i will have to use this a lot more so I will have to start getting used to it. I found it very hard to make this image of Susan Boyle and 50 Cent. I think the picture looks very bad but for my first attempt on Adobe photoshop I am very happy. This image took me about an hour to make.

Music magazines all over the world use Photoshop to edit their images from the front cover to make the celebrity look better and more attractive to the audience. Their are more advantages of using Photoshop like...

• Makes the image stand out more
• Makes the background look better
• Makes skin, eyes, hair, jaw line, body look better
• Helps sell the magazine

and there are many more.  


There are also many disadvantages of using photoshop on a music magazine. They are...

• Setting false goals to younger people. E.g. if they see their role model on the front of the magazine looking very thin then they would want to starve themselves.
• It would make the person on the front cover feel bad because after all their hard work of dieting and wanting to look good, it still isn't good enough.
• The image is false so people will be buying the magazine that is basically lies.
• Sometimes the image looks too unrealistic

                                                                                                                  

Magazine terminology analysis

From the two magazine covers I can see that they have the same kind of terminology but they are totally diiferent covers that are aimed at different types of audience. I will start off with the similaraties of the two music magazines. Firstly they both have a Masthead. It is important for music magazines to have this so the reader can recognise what type of magazine they are buying. Secondly a main image of the artsts are on the front covers to show what the main story is about (Drake and Rihanna). The main images are a lot larger than the others to show they are the dominate force.

The differences are the genres between the two magazines. This means they are aimed at different sexes and audiences. They both have different artists on the front cover to show the reader who the magazine will be about. The main colours of the magazines are totally different. The Drake front cover is dark and shows the reader that they need to be a older age to read it. The Rihanna is bright and colourful and shows that anyone can read it but I think it is aimed at young teenage girls.

Magazine Termanoligy 2

Magazine Terminology

I have made this image to show different magazine terminology.

Cardinal Bulletin analysis

From this front cover I can tell that christmas is the main subject. I can tell this because of the red and white colours and the snow on the word "Cardinal". Also I can tell it is christmas time because of the subtitle "Christmas Concert". The heads message is important because it is aimed at the parents swell as the students. The front cover of a music magazine is based around one imagine that stands out. This front cover has a couple of images with a lot of text. The t comparance wo structures are totally different in to this front cover and any music magazine. 


The text on the left side of the page states that its the 'Heads Message'. This tells us that the headmaster of the school take a very active role within the schools curricular activities. The images of the students of the page also portrays and conveys how the students take pride and enrich themselves into the extra curricular activities within the school. 

If I was to present this college magazine cover to an audience i would consider putting less amount of text on the page and put one main image on the page. I would also consider putting a larger and more eye-cathing headline on my page.  This will help make the page more appealing and more professional to the readers to look at and will make it more eye-catching for the readers.     

Questionnaire Results

Here are the results I got back from the questionnaire I made a couple of weeks back. I can use this information to help me with my music magazine and I can relate back to it.

Gender?
Male - 100%
Female - 0%

Age?
16-21 - 95%
21-30 - 5%
30-50 - 0%
50 and over - 0%

Do you read music magazines?
Yes - 20%
No - 80%

Why not? Because...

I use online websites to read them - 40%

I'm not a big fan of music - 5% 

They are too expensive - 5% 

They are out of date -  50%

You don't like the latest artists and music - 0%

How much would you be willing to spend on a music magazine?

Under £1.00 - 0% 

£1.00 - £2.00 - 45% 

£3.00 - £4.00 - 5% 

£5.00 or more - 50%

What music do you like?

Pop - 20% 

Rock - 20% 

Rap - 40% 

Classics - 10% 

Other - 10%

Would you buy them if they had more elements such as...

Bold Headlines - 5%

Large images - 40% 

Colourful images and text - 15% 

Small text - 0% 

Neat layout - 5% 

Messy layout - 20% 

Other - 15%

Would the name of the magazine be important?

Yes - 20%

No - 20%

Would not bother me - 60%

Hollyoaks male gaze

I will analyse how the male gaze is used in this clip from hollyoaks.

From the beginning of the clip the camera is focused on the female who is lying on her front so she has her derriere out. The camera doesn't move of her until she moves. There is a cole up show on the girl who bend over to pick something up. The camera goes from girl to girl for a short while who has a bikini on exposing her body.
Because the camera zooms in, this relates to the male gaze because it automatically knows what the males would be looking at.

  

Feminism

Definition 

The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

Many people have different views and opinions about feminism. There are people who are feminists and people who are not. There are also people who see the phrase "feminism" as a different thing.

This is what pop sensation Lady Gaga has to say about feminism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=habpdmFSTOo&feature=player_embedded

My opinion is feminism is rubbish. I think this because I agree that all women are made in different shapes and sizes. I think that in the 21st century, attractive women get more attention and this is just natural. Just like footballers get paid a lot more money than other people but males don't moan about it, they just adapt to it and find ways around being a footballer.

This picture shows an attractive woman (Scarlett Johansson) posing. Other women may think she is tacky and too confident in herself. Most males would glaze at this picture and admire it.

This woman disagrees with feminism and is trying to say that all women are made in different shapes and sizes. She had this picture taken to show that any woman can be the face of a magazine no matter what she looks like.

Research Methods

In this blog i will be talking about the different types of methods to use while researching.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is

• To quantify data and generalize results from a sample to the population of interest
• To measure the incidence of various views and opinions in a chosen sample
• Sometimes followed by qualitative research which is used to explore some findings further
• Using surveys and Questionnaires 

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is 

• To gain an understanding of underlying reasons and motivations
• To provide insights into the setting of a problem, generating ideas and/or hypotheses for later quantitative research
• To uncover prevalent trends in thought and opinion
• Using interviews   

Primary Data

Primary data is when you conduct your own research manually making it unique and relevant to your research, this is original data. The advantage of this data is that you can address specific research because you are the one finding the data, also there is no chance that the data will be outdated which can be a problem with secondary data because you will be finding this data at the time that you need it. The most popular ways of collecting this data are surveys, interviews and focus groups.

Secondary Data

Secondary data is data that has already been conducted in the past and collected for another purpose which makes collecting this data a risk, as the data might not be relevant to your research and can also be outdated. You can get this type of data from sources such as newspaper and magazine articles and internet online websites. Secondary data is less time consuming than primary data and can support findings of primary data, and you can use secondary data to compare with primary data results.

Semitic Theory

Semitic theory is the relationship between a sign, an object and the meaning behind it when a person interprets the sign they believe that the sign represents the object. The sign is the interpretant which means that is the representation of the object; according to Morris people are interprets of signs and interpretations are concluded through three stages:

1. Perception -  The person becomes aware of the sign in front of them.

2. Manipulation - The person starts to interpret the sign and decides how to respond to it.

3. Consummation - The person responds to the sign.

Denotation

Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the "dictionary definition."¨ For example, if you look up the word rat in a dictionary, you will discover that one of its denotative meanings is "Any of various long-tailed rodents resembling mice but larger, especially one of the genus Rattus"

Connotation

Connotation, on the other hand, refers to the associatens that are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word. The connotative meanings of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. The connotations for the word rat could include evil or danger.

This can be applied to all music magazines. An example is the image at the left side. This is 50 Cent on the front cover of XX. The denotation is he looks angry. It also shows him showing off with all his money and a handcuff on his wrist. This is showing everyone that he doesn't care about the law or safety by sitting on a pile full of money. The connotation of the magazine which is my expression is that he is a bad influence on young people and sets a very bad example. I also think he just doesn't care about anything but himself.

QUESTIONAIRE


I have made this questionnaire to gather information to make my own music magazine. I have done two sections. There is a section for people who do read music magazines and a section for those who don't. I have made sure it is appropriate for all people of all ages to fill out and I have adapted it to make sure there is no problems or excuses for people not to try and fill it out.

I would really appreciate it if you could fill it out my questionnaire and be as honest as you can to give me accurate answers. Thank You.

To fill out my questionnaire click on the link at the top of the page thats says 'QUESTIONAIRE'

Music Magazines

Music Magazine Task 1

A music magazine is a magazine that contains information about music artists, songs and bands. There are different types of music magazines like Pop, Rock and rap. The oldest music magazine of all time is a magazine that teaches you how to play the guitar. This is called the BMG. Different music magazines are aimed at different genders and different ages. e.g, a rap magazine would be aimed at teenage boys and young adults aged 16-25. The most popular music magazine in the UK is 'Q'. The most popular music magazine in the world is 'Vibe' or 'Mojo'. I think the future of music magazines is they will become less and less popular due to technology taking over.

What is a Music Magazine ?

A music magazine is magazine dedicated to music and music culture. Many music magazines typically include music news, interviews essays, recorded reviews, news about famous artists, concert and festival reviews.

 

The History of Music Magazines 

 

The very first issue of billboard magazine was printed in 1894, however it did not become well known until 1936. This gradually evolved into radio airplay and recorded sales charts. Over time different genres of music were introduced and it wasn't long until NME ( New Musical Express ) was first issued in 1952. In the 1970s NME became the best selling british music magazine. Now there are a range of different music magazines with particular genres including rock, pop and classical music magazines.

Below is the music magazine 'Vibe' with my favourite artist, Kanye West on the front cover. This would be aimed at teenage boys and young adults like me aged 16-25. I like this front cover because it isn't dark and depressing like other front covers i have seen of rock bands. I think this suits the style of Kanye West because he isn't the kind to have a dark side. I think if people who liked Kanye seen this front cover they would be very tempted to buy it.

There are different genres of music magazines such as

• pop
• Rock
• Rap
• Classic
• Heavy Metal
• Hip Hop

The future of music magazines

I think the future of music magazines is looking bad. I think this because technology is taking over now. I think nobody will by them because they will be free links to them online. I think this has already started to happen and I think from now on it will be downhill for music magazines.

Introduction

Introduction Blog

                  Hello and welcome to my blog!

As a part of my AS Media Study A-Level I will have to keep a blog, in this blog you will find:

•   My planning throughout the course

•   My evaluation

•   My research, planning and evaluation throughout the year.

To support the research I will provide videos and images in my blogs.

I hope you enjoy my journey through my media blogs.

Also, I have purchased specific music magazines that focuses on my chosen music genre. This is to get a better understanding of the music magazines layout.

About me...

I am studying Double BTEC Sports Studies and Media A-Levels. I have a big interest in football and watching Everton. I love to play football and other sports like golf, tennis and more. The music I am into is rap music like Kanye West, Jay Z, Eminem, and lots more.
Here is a video of my favourite artist performing one of his bests songs with Jay Z.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQzQA9lwkpw