Photo shoot planning

Now that you have started to produce the mock-ups for your front cover you need to begin planning for the photos that you will need to take for the front cover in your own photo shoots.  These photos will need to feature people that will be convincing as musical artists. They will also need to feature props and costumes that will make them look relevant to a music magazine.   You will need to consider the location and how to light that location. Using a white sheet as a backdrop can be an effective tool to create the illusion of a photography studio.  You will need to try a few ideas for camera shots and try different costumes and looks.  You should aim to take 3 different approaches that you can then develop into mock-ups.  You should take many more photos than you need.  

Use the template below to help you plan these photos.

  

Homework

To complete 6 layout ideas for the front cover of your music magazine.

These need to be different to the designs you produced for your school magazine.

Please complete and upload to your blog for Tuesday 22nd November.

Mock-up for front cover of your music magazine

We are now going to start generating some mock-up ideas for our front cover for the music magazine.  Using a photo of a music artist that we source from google images we are going to layout the information for the front cover to follow the key conventions.  Select an appropriate font, colour and house style to suit the sub-genre of your music magazine. Make sure that you experiment and try things out.  When finished uploads the ideas to your blog.

NME brand identity, ideology and Q magazine

Developing a Brand Identity and Brand Values for your music magazine

All of the magazines featured on this blog have a very distinct and definitive brand identity.

Brand identity is how all the elements that contribute to the visual appearance work together to distinguish that brand in the mind of the audience/ consumer.  This could be the  use of colour, fonts, style of imagery, layout and house style.  All successful brands work very hard to establish this recognition within their audience/ target market.

How is the brand identity of the magazine presented?

Is it cool, sophisticated, minimal, elegant, opulent, young, messy, informal, modern, tasteful, controversial, interesting, unusual, challenging? 

Your job is to do the same for your music magazine.  You want it to be original, unique and distinctive from other brands.  You want it to make a clear statement that is going to appeal  to your target audience and you want it to display the core brand values. 

Brand values are things that are deemed important by a brand, the things that it stands for and it represents.

For example; youthful, fun, excitement, future, modernity, fashion, style, technology, charity, generosity, establishment, originality, ideas, culture, social activity, edginess

In relation to a music magazine it is clear that it will value the genre(s) of music it represents. Consider how NME establishes its brand values.

It is built upon a love for new music, for supporting young and upcoming talent that are true to the basics of live music.  It values the joy that music brings to life and the excitement of finding new artists that inspire and innovate.  Think about how they approach this.

You now need to start to establish the brand identity and brand values for your own music magazine but before that do an analysis of the brand identify and brand values of one existing music magazine other than NME.

Moodboard for photos for your music magazine

To create the look and feel for your music magazine you will need to ensure you capture good quality photos that are relevant to the style and genre of your proposed magazine. They will need to be clearly relevant to the genre of music magazines.  This may mean the use of instruments as props.  You will certainly need to consider the representation of your subject with the use of hair, make-up, costume, location, lighting etc.

The moodboard should be a collage of images that you might potentially use as inspiration for your own photos.  It should include a wide range with a variety of shot types and angles.

Refer to to the examples below to help develop your ideas.

Ideology- what does your magazine stand for?

Ideology is a concept that we need to understand and apply to our analysis and construction of media texts.

Ideology is defined as a world view, a system or set of values, beliefs or attitudes that an individual, a group or society hold to be true or important.  

When analysing or constructing a media text you might look to identify a dominant ideology.  These are ideologies that are repeatedly communicated to us by important social institutions such as the media, the church, the Government, the law and educational establishments.  These are ideologies that we live by in our day to day lives and often do not question as they have become natural common sense things that we believe. 

These dominant ideologies effectively dissuade us from rebelling against these beliefs and help to maintain an air of moral stability within our society.

Dominant ideologies include beliefs about gender roles, marriage, family, sexuality, religion, about tradition and heritage, about the economy and about social institutions.

Consumerism has become a dominant ideology in the western economies since the industrial revolution.  It is based upon the principle that a person is happier if he or she has more material possessions and by consuming more and more material goods.

Common examples of ideologies include;

Committing a crime is against the law and if you commit a crime you need to punished.

Education is to be valued and you should go to school to gain qualifications to become a valued member of society with a responsible job.

How could you identify the ideology of a music magazine?  What does it value or hold as important?

Does it value new music? Does it value live music events?  Does it value up and coming artists?  Does it place importance upon particular genres or styles of music?  Does it value promoting particular lifestyles or products?  Does it value a narrow range of music or a broad range of music? Does it value influential artists from the past?  Does it value a particular social group?  Does it believe that music is important?  Does it believe that buying music is important? Does it believe in technology supporting the development of music?  Does it believe that live music is important?

How is this conveyed? How do you know this?  What evidence do you have to support your view?

Answering these questions will help you to establish the ideologies present in the media texts you analyse and in those you construct.

You will need to construct a clear ideology about your magazine and identify what it stands for and who it is communicating to.

Questionnaire for your target audience

Now that you have completed some of your research into existing products you will now begin to get an idea of who your target audience will be for the music magazine you are going to plan and construct.

To do this you will need to identify the following;

What genre of music magazine are you going to be constructing? 
Will it be for a mainstream or niche audience? Why? 
Is it similar to any existing products or is it going to be different? Explain how and why.
Who will the core reader of your magazine be? What artists do they like? How do they dress? Where do they shop? What products do they own or aspire to own? How do they spend their time? Try and establish a profile of who they are.
Who will be your primary and secondary audience?
What will their age ranges be?
What will be the gender mix?
What will be the socio-economic mix?
How do you know this?  ( Compare with similar products on nrs.co.uk)

Create an audience profile similar to the NME press pack.

Once you have done this you will then need to  draft a questionnaire for homework.
this questionnaire should be a minimum of 10 questions and should allow you to collect information that will help you to construct your own magazine.  You might look at other examples on blog spot created by other students for ideas but do not just copy.   Remember that it needs to fit your ideas for your magazine and chosen genre.  You could use Survey Monkey to create your questionnaire and post links to it on your Facebook or twitter account.

CLICK THIS LINK Questionnaire example

Mainstream- the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are shared by most people and regarded as normal or conventional.  Appealing to a mass audience.  A magazine catering for all aspects of Pop music would appeal to a mainstream audience.

Niche- is a fraction of a total market or an audience. A segment of the market or the audience with highly specific needs and interests which cannot generally be satisfied by mainstream products.  A magazine focusing upon Dub step would be therefore be for a niche market.  

VIBE magazine inspiration