A Front Cover Analysed – attracting ‘that’ audience

Here is an analysed front cover of a magazine

Reflection

In this task, I analysed an ‘Olivia Rodrigo’ music magazine which was featured on the cover of MusicWeek’s magazine. I went through and analysed the key features of a magazine which include:

  • Audience demographics
  • Audience psychographics
  • Font/typeface
  • Colour pallet
  • Images
  • Language

I also researched MusicWeek’s mission statement to get a wider range of information about the magazine and get a greater understanding of who their target audience is (demographics/psychographics).

Doing this task has developed my knowledge on how different types of magazine designs can attract different audiences and convey different narratives using media language. As well as this, I researched Hall’s Reception Theory. He states that ‘the way in which an audience has individual interpretation of a media text and that reading is a two stage process’. These two processes includes the producer encodes ideology into a text and wishes it to be read in a particular way and the audience then decodes the text, but they also bring their own ideology to the text. By knowing this, this will help to encourage me to create a stronger, more powerful music magazine to hit my target audiences values and beliefs.

Looking forward, when I create my music magazine I will ensure I include all the elements a music magazine should contain, such as, the font/typeface, colour pallet, images and language to make sure I am gratifying my target audience.

 

The Camera Talks

Here is a Collage made on Canva with 9 images that have the denotation, technical camera term and connotation

For this task we were put into groups and took photos with different angles, distance, framing, facial expressions and body language as a type of media language to help convey a narrative or execute an idea.

The types of framing include the following:

  • High angle
  • Low angle
  • Wide angle
  • Canted angle
  • Point of View
  • Extreme long shot
  • Long shot
  • Medium long shot
  • Mid shot
  • Medium close up
  • Big close up
  • Close-up
  • Extreme close-up

I used different angles in my photos to allow the audience to decode (Hall) what is going on in the photo, which can then allow them to encode (Hall) and interpret their own opinion of what they believe is happening behind the screen. I also included ‘Mise-en-scene’ within my photos from the use of props. In particular, the photo of Hevin locked up in a cage. The denotation of him being physically locked up in a cage and the connotation of how he got in that situation in the first place.

I used different camera shots in my photos to emphasise the connotations for each photo to convey a narrative. For instance, the close up shots of the mans face make the audience more aware of the models emotions and what could have made him feel like that.

Reflection

This task has made me understand how different camera angles and distances all influence how media language is portrayed when conveying a narrative. Looking forward, in my work I will use these camera techniques so the audience can decode (Hall) my media work and develop connotations about the images.