My mission statement is:

‘Breakdown is one of the top five magazines for those who love R&B music and styles. We include top stories straight from your favourite bands and artists, the best R&B releases and exclusive interviews from those topping our charts daily and your old favourites as well. Breakdown magazine inspires passion and freedom in young adults who don’t know what to do with their lives as well as R&B fashion modelled by popular groups and soloists. We allow our readers to express themselves through everything R&B and encourage variety’

This week I have learned to use flash photography equipment. For example I have learnt:

• how to put up a light stand
• how to connect the light to the stand and move it up and down
• how to connect a softbox to the light gently
• how to test the light out
• how to raise the brightness if needed and lower it
• how to connect the two lights so they will go off together
• how to connect your camera using a hotbox so your camera can go off the same time as your flash

This will help with my music magazine because it has helped me to understand the different styles and poses I could interpret. I got to see how I make something my own and make it original. You can use Mine-en-scene to convey meaning in lots of different ways. For example:

• a story
• an image
• an idea  

This will have a big impact on my own planning and research because I know that I have to connect with my audience on a personal level and get them to feel different emotions by just looking at the cover of my magazine. I realize that I will not only have to use the music genre to make the magazine but that the magazine has to embody all of that specific music genre. Everything in my magazine has to correlate with each other and nothing can be put there for no reason. I want the audience to say the cover looks confident and full of emotion. This is the kind of look I would like to pull off since most R&B artists today look that way.

Richard Dyer a media theorist, decided that the paradox or riddle of the star was that they are both:

• Extraordinary-talented, amazing
• Ordinary-go shopping, drive cars, fail exams

And are both:

• Present-fan sites, tweets, social media, interviews (we can interact with them)
• Absent-concerts, interviews, TV (they are out of our reach)

As a fan we would love to meet these stars.

As a media creator I have to style these people to look like a story I am trying to tell. Every star has their own story so we want to make sure each story or narrative is unique to that star. This will entice the fans and get them invested in the star and the story.