To produce a music magazine, you need to know your way around computer aided design (CAD). In this task, I was using Adobe InDesign to experiment with the varuious features that it offers. This is because InDesign is the program that we will eventually use to create our music magazine. To experiment with InDesign’s features, I was given a music magazine to try and recreate, to try and undersdtand what each feture does. I had to try and find the best fonts and typefaces to match with the original magazine and I also had to make sure that I sized the image correctly with the right proportions. We were given an image for the background of the cover (in this case, it was the persons face) and then we had to add all of the other elements on top of it.

There were some aspects of designing the magazine were more difficult than the others. For example, one of the more challenging things to do was trying to find the right font to match the cover of the real magazine. The pugs were also challenging, because the circles have a spiky pattern around the outside of them on the actual magazine. The closest I could get was the “white diamond” border pattern. This made the spiky pattern around the outside, but the spikes were not filled in with this pattern, whereas they were on the original. In future, I need to mkae sure that text that is all in a column is line up. In the magazine cover that I have done, the text does not line up down the right hand side of the page.

I enjoyed this task and it has made mne realise how muchwork goes into creating a magazine cover. will need to use and develop these skills on InDesign in order to create my own magazine cover.

Here are some Youtube tutorials on things that would have helped me when I was creating the magazine cover. These tutorials would have helped me because these are things that i really struggled with when creating the magazine. Distrivbuting the shapes tutorial would have helped me with the spiky border problem for the pugs.

Every image in a media text has connotation associated with it. You can use these connotations to assume what is going on in the scene. Even a still image could tell you somehting about what is going on in a movie or video.

Our task was to take photos using the different types of shot. We also had connotation that went with these photos. For example, if there was a photo of two people, that is called a two shot. But it also depends on what the people are doing in the scene, this is where Mise en Scene comes in. For example, in the image where there are two people at the bus stop, we can assume that they are strangers, and that the scene is slightly awkward. We can guess this because they are sat quite far apart from each other on the bench. they are also not making eye contact, which shows that they are not having a conversation. This is what gave us the idea for the bus stop photo in the collage above.

When it comes to shooting photos for my music magazine, I will need to consider what type of photo I am going to use. If I use a high angle shot, it can make the subject look smaller and more vulnerable. Whereas, if I use a low angle shot, the subject is made to look much bigger and more powerful. This was the idea behind the photo in the collage that is captioned ‘#headintheclouds’. Low angle shots are often used in movies where the producer wants the villain to look powerful and menacing.

 

 

Reflection:

All denotations are leftn in a media text for a reason. The producer has left in the denotations to display a narrative.  The elements that are used in a media text are called Mise En Scene. There are five elements to consider in a media text. These are: costume, lighting, acting, makeup, props and setting. When a producer makes a media text, they consider all of these elements before creating it.

In groups of three, we were given a genre of music to work on. For this genre, we had to create a moodboard for the topic and then we had to dress up one of the members of our group in a costume that matched the genre. My group was given jazz as the genre. As you c an see in the image above, we created a moodboard using pictures and words that we associate with jazz music. The person dressing up would also dress up as if they were performing that genre of music live to an audience.

This explains that poses in the photos above. We had to experiement with different camera angles to try and fiund the perfect shot for a tour poster. I took the photo’s based off of the photo’s that had been used in the moodboard. We tried to look laid back and relaxed, as that is what jazz singers normally are. The are also quite retro, which is why I dressed the model up in a bowtie and a waistcoat.

I think that the last image is the best photo that we managed to take, so we have decided to use this photo for the tour poster. We used this photo because in my opinion it looks the most like the jazz pictures that I have seen. I think this is because he looks more laid back, talented and retro.

After having completed this task, I uderstood the importance of Mise En Scene. I also understand how much a producer needs to think about before publishing an image. I understand that i will also need to take these things into account when I come to making my music magazine.

Tour posters are used to attract peoples attention. They usually do this by using bright colours, which is all that people usually read into the poster. But there is so much more to it that people can analyse. For example, people can read into what sort of emotion the person/group is trying to portray with their body language. If someone is being quite playfull with their body language, then you can assume that they are a fun, informal group/induvidual. Another aspect that you could analyse is the font. If the font is in a really fancy style, then you would usually be led to assume that they are a classicla singer because the font is more formal. I mentioned earlier that people usually are just attracted by bright colours on posters, But you can actually also analyse the colours and why the creator has used them. In my example, the colours are bright (blue and pink) which shows that they are fun and upbeat. If the creator of the poster used colours like black and white, we would work out that they are mo0re downbeat. Black and white could also be associated with older music. the colours blue and pink could also be used to show that the group are inclusive and their target audience isn’t just one specific gender. Blue is uually associated with males and pink is normnally associated with females. That is why we could be led to this conclusion. That might not have been the message that they were trying to put across with those colours but you can read more into the poster than what you first see.

That is the point that I am trying to make. It takes the creator quite of lot of time to create a tour poster and then somebody comes along and looks at it for a few seconds then walks away, or even worse, they just completely ignore it. If people just read a bit more into the poster, then they can probably assume what the group or induvidual are like and what sort of music they make without just going away and searching them up on the internet.

For my magazine, I will need to consider all of these aspects too: target audience, colours, Font, Body language and clothing. These aspects will make people know what type of music I am trying to advertise and what they group are like. I am looking forward to seeing what it is like to create a music magazine, but I need to cinsider a lot of thiongs, so it may not be as simple as people first think.