The Magazine Search, Streez Sound

In today's lesson we have learnt about the magazines and the audiences. As a group we have learnt how to analyse a magazine. Learnt keywords such as Masthead, Banner, Strapline etc. We have learnt that magazines are published in order to make profit, used as a business. The magazine we have analysed is named Rock Sound. we have analysed the strap-line of the magazine and the rest and pointed them out. Later on we have decided to make a magazine on the HipHop genre which we thought we can do well on. As a group we have discussed it and came up with a tittle called Streez Sound. We took couple of photoshoots for the magazine and hopefully we would start on the tutorial for how to make a magazine.

The Reason for magazines

In today's lesson we learnt about the reason for magazines-they exist to be sold in order to make a profit and, also to be a direct link between the advertising companies and us the audience. we analysed a magazine cover each my group done the Rock/Heavy metal magazine called "Rock Sound". We had to comment on the strap line, who we thought the target audience would be, the main cover line and image. We had to look at all different sections of the magazine front cover and analyse them, like the banner-a strap across the top or bottom of the page showing details about the magazine and special offers. A graphic image which usually contains information on special offers. The main image which is the vocal point of any magazine and usually is looking at the user, to more involve the reader. the cover lines on the magazine-which are used to sell the magazine and of course all the legal information that the magazines have to display such as the barcode. the magazine 'Rock Sound's' main cover image is of a Young man with long black hair, tattoos that cover all of his arm from his forearm all the way to his shoulder. He is wearing black clothes which add to his menacing/rebellious attitude. He is standing with a guitar over his right shoulder, because of this pose it looks like he is about to smash the guitar. the  Masthead of this mag is is big bold lettering which is fading and has cracks in it, the way this affect is used kind of implies that the magazine is so good that the stories inside are struggling to break out.

Rock vs Streez Sound

In todays lesson the group and I learnt the key features of a magazine cover and the importance that these features make towards the reader. Here are a few distinctive features in a magazine: The Masthead- The title of a magazine always justified at the right or spanning the entire width of the entire width of the magazine. Strapline - A subheading used by some magazines and The Main cover image - The main image used on a magazine usually looking straight at the camera. Each group had a task to look at a cover of magazine and then write and discuss the features of it. The magazine that my group had to analyse was titled 'Rock Sound', Rock sound is a rock music magazine targetted at goths, emos and all other young people interested in the heavy rock sound. We learnt the target audience by looking at the main cover image which is a man i would say in his twenties holding a guitar, giving the impression that he is about to smash it. His dark clothing, long black hair and large gothic tattoos gave me the idea that the person that reads this magazine would relate to him and those people that relate to him make our target audience. Me and my group learnt a lot by looking at the masthead as the style that it is written in not only tells us more about the music but defines more about the image used. The word Rock sound has been written in bold capital letters and each of these letters appear to have cracks formed on them. Me and my group discovered that this could signify the music, as the cracks in the letters could sybolise the fact that the music is so hard like rocks that just as rocks have cracks in them the lettering should aslo have this to justify the music. I also feel that the cracks in the lettering could imply that the man in the image has caused them, as i have said above he appears to be smashing his guitar and this could have caused the cracks.
Based on the magazine cover that we had been given the group and i were then given a sheet with questions about the target audience that we had to answer. The questions included What do they drink? What gender are they? & What music do they like?. These questions enabled the group to get a deeper look at the target audience and to identify what key features they have that makes this magazine appeal to them.
We were then given our final task which was to think and plan our own magazine cover focusing on the music that we where going to use and the two images that we are planning on shooting in the following lesson. The group decided that the best music genre that would be best for our magazine to be based on would be grime. We made this decision as not only do the majority of the group listen to this type of music but we had ideas of what the image would be and the stlye it is shot in. We decided that our magazine would be titled 'streez sound',we also decided that we would shoot two images, one of Omarr on his own located in a corridor at the college we attend, we planned the second image to be of me and Ufuk located outside of the college. It was important that the two images showed to different mise-en scene as the group wanted to show variation on the two issues of the magazine which also signifies that the genre of music that we decided to use has a wide range of stlyes and people within the one type of music. It is also important that in both of the images the model is wearing headphones and listening to music as it also adds the effect of what the magazine is based on.
In the next lesson we hope to complete shooting the images and be closer to completing our magazine.