First Drafts

Due to most of my work being stored on the schools drive, I was unable to take it home to finish, therefore I had to try and recreate them to the best of my ability, and in certain areas I think I did that well.

Preliminary Task

Schedule

Task	Subtask
Diary Posts	At least one every week
Similar Product Research	Front covers, contents, double paged spreads
Research	Codes and conventions, Representation and Audience
Proposal	Type of magazine
	Target audience
	Content of magazine
	Style of magazine
	Institution
	Distribution
Inspiration/Mood board	Mood board
	Inspiration for magazine theme
Magazine names	Brainstorm
	Design ideas
	Final Choice
Colour Connotations	How different colours represent different things
Poll Results	To get an understanding of how my target audience think.
Target Audience Profile	Social Category
	Typical reader
	Psychographics
	Demographics
	Interviews
Photo shoot	Model release
	Time laps – evidence I took the photos
	Photoshoot
	Contact Sheet
Sell Line Ideas	Ideas for the sell lines used to help sell my magazine
Contents Page Ideas	Ideas for what articles to contain in my magazine
Masthead designs	Designs for my magazine masthead
	Analysis and decision
Article Draft	A draft of my double page spread article
Mise en scene	An analysis of the props and clothes used throughout my photo shoot
Front cover draft	Photoshop drafts
Contents page draft	Photoshop drafts
Double page spread draft	Photoshop drafts

Mise en-scene

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Drafts

Article Draft:

With the recent release of the album ‘Affection to Infection’, and with his tune ‘Here To Stay’ going straight to number one, as well as numerous other success, such as being top of the Beatport download charts 24 weeks in a row with ‘Addict’, ‘Tentative’, ‘Ghost’ and more recently ‘Morti Viventi’. Possibly the one of the best success story and most emotional story ever heard, at only 16, he’s already experienced things most people would never experience in their entire lives. From North-West London, the upcoming producer and DJ, RVM (pronounced Rhythm) explains to Sub Conscious how much of a challenge it is to get out there, as well as a gripping story that is worthy of an Oscar.  

How did it all start off?

I hate this question (laughs), I don’t know exactly, it was just everything coming together, I was always interested in music, but it showed more towards my mid-teens, trying to make mashups on Windows Movie Maker and hour long sets using iTunes’ ‘start and finish time’ features, (laughs), yea I was quite deprived of the expensive programs. But I think what really got me into it was when a friend handed me FL Studio demo version on a USB in August of 2010, which at the time I thought was amazing, until I found out I couldn’t re-open files I’d saved. In the end I got the full version and attempted to refinish them, but they were the worst standard of music I’ve ever heard, so I just gave up and started a whole load of new projects using newer packs and plug-ins I’d got over the last six months. Then yeah, I suppose with a few friends it just got me motivated to, almost, churn out as many songs as I could and over time, as you’d expect people grew more and more interested and the support from friends was huge. When I had my first play on the radio, I found out around 100 people were listening, floods of Facebook Chat sounds came through my speakers and yeah, I just suppose it all elevated from there.

Your first radio appearance was just 6 months after you properly began making music, how did you feel about it all?

Yeah, I was at my ex’s house as we had gone to get stuff for a party I was DJing at the following weekend, and I got a text from a sort of promoter, well, he downloaded my tune from my SoundCloud and uploaded it onto his YouTube channel, telling me to check the link he had put on my Facebook wall, so I logged onto her computer and listened for about 15 minutes to ‘wickedspinsradio.com’, thinking it was all some sort of joke, but then I heard the radio DJ, who sounded about 4 years old saying ‘Big up Rhythm’, in my head I thought “oh dear, this is embarrassing if anyone’s listening”, it turned out the promoter had used my tune as an instrumental and yea, it weren’t too bad but I thought it could’ve gone a lot better.

Let me guess, someone trying to get into the grime scene?

Haha, yeah, typical!

You mentioned DJing an event the weekend after, was this your first event?

No, I did a friend’s 18^th earlier in the year, a month after I got my first mixer, I was originally planning on just pre-making a set and playing it on audacity, good thing I didn’t, turns out the files corrupted and that would’ve been more embarrassing than the radio situation. Fortunately I would like to think I improved and after many months of not DJ’ing anything, I organised a party to raise money for my World Challenge funds which I was doing the following summer. I shared the night with a friend, friend’s dad who got stroppy and wanted to DJ the whole night because he thought I was going to break his equipment, even though I was using my own. As you can probably tell through my tone of voice I was not happy! In the end I dropped ‘Addict’ with Flux Pavilion’s Bass Cannon, and lead on to an early version of ‘Here To Stay’, and the DJ turned out to be an amazing guy. The speakers he provided were worth over £2500, and I’m pretty sure the sub he had made a few people’s eyes bleed. Basically is was f**king mental.

So in the end a successful night?

Yea it wasn’t too bad!

If you could choose one person in the entire music industry to work with, who would it be? and why?

Rebecca Black, easy question! (laughs) Erm,  I really can’t put my finger on one person but on the production side of things I’d have to go with Rob Swire, he’s been my idol since about 15 years old, between him and Liam Howlett, they really encouraged me to get into the scene and producing. I’d like to do collaborations with Skrillex and deadmau5, who seem to have pushed the scene over in the US, who have amazing crowds! If I wanted to have vocals on a tune, I’d want to have either Christina Grimmie, been watching her on YouTube for years, one of the most heavenly voices I’ve ever heard, or for male vocal someone with a distinct voice, such as Mali, Liam Bailey or any Jamaican vocalists! Every song needs to be as unique as possible from the last you produced and different vocalists can make all the difference.

Interesting choice, I see you’re a fan of deadmau5 and Skrillex, leading me onto my next question, if a big established artist, who you grew up listening to and got you into the scene, asked you to tour with them for around two months, what would your reaction be?

Go to the pub, every day, except Friday and Saturday, where I’ll throw a party and have some upcoming local acts in the scene to give them a chance to get themselves out there, therefore everyone’s a winner! I’ll probably make sure I have everything I need, and probably become nocturnal and suffer from insomnia until the tour comes around.

A day in the life of...
This feature will show my audience about the life one of the stars have and also how a winner of an ongoing competition to spend a day with a star, spent their day. This feature will be a main USP of my magazine and therefore attracting audience every week and applying to spend a day with their idols.

Sell-out Shows
This feature again will be in every issue of the magazine and describe to the audience about the live events that happened in the past week, as my magazine will be sold on a weekly basis. It will attract the audience to attend more events, as well as possibly setting up a yearly event with big names, to attract our audience and get regular buyers of the magazine coming as well as those who don’t buy the magazine.

EP to Glastonbury
This feature will describe a success story of an artist and how they started out, describing what problems they had and how they overcame them. They will in depth describe their first EP they released, again with what problems they had, and also describe what it’s like to be performing at some of the world’s biggest events now, whether they like it and how life is different.

Turn it up to 12
This feature describes how to make the most out of your listening experience without annoying anyone, including how to create perfect equaliser presets and by having it too loud can in fact ruin your listening experience. It also mimics the Spinal Tap ‘Turn it up to 11’ and it’s again going one get than them. The number 12 also suggests late at night, when it is harder to listen to your music loud freely expect through headphones.

WIN TICKETS
This feature will list 5 tickets that are available to win at the end of each month and 5 winners will be picked at random to get them. This takes a twist on the typical single winner competition and it also adds suspense onto finding out what tickets you’ve won as you won’t know until you receive them in the post. The use of the word ‘WIN’ in capitals shows the audience they are getting them for nothing and have to be lucky.

Lucky Dip
Similar to the ‘WIN TICKETS’ feature, there will be 5 prizes to be won each month, which will allow the audience to win prizes, changing each month, from CDs, signed CDs, speakers, signed speakers, instruments etc. This will attract the reader as again they will not know what they’ve won until it has arrived.

Tour Training
Before artists go on tour, or big festivals, I will interview them on what they do to make sure they can be healthy throughout the tour and what they do before to survive. This will include stuff such as exercise, what to eat, and general items they need to take to ensure they have a good experience.

Contents Ideas
My contents page will be very busy, displaying both images and text to make it stand out and appealing to the audience. The images will be captioned with page numbers next to them as well, allowing them to navigate through the magazine quicker and easier. The main articles in my magazine will clearly stand out above the others to attract the reader’s attention quicker and easier, making it easier to navigate to the most valued article.

On my contents page, all my content will be displayed down the right, separated into categories for easier navigation, as well as on the left a list of artist/band names to allow the audience to navigate to the pages they want easier. Underneath each title of content on the left will be a brief few words summing up the article and attracting the reader to the section, this will not be in bold unlike the main article titles, which will stand out from the rest of the page, making it easier to read, as well as the small print underneath allowing the audience to clearly distinguish between the two. This will make my contents page easy to use but the graphics used will give it the sophistication it needs to attract and surprise the audience. In addition, there will be page numbers located to the left of the titles of the articles, this will be bigger than the title, taking up the space of both the title and the subheading, and it will also be in the same font and size as the title. This allows easy recognition of what page it is on, allowing the audience to find the page in a matter of seconds.

I will also have images of artists featured in the magazine displayed on my contents page, which will look straight out into the audience, allowing them to see their favourite artists and bands, creating a personal relationship with them and feeling as if they knew them. I will not let the images be the main point of my contents as it is used as a guide for the magazine, therefore the audience will want to be able to read the text and find it easier than the images.

Lastly, at the bottom of my contents page I will include an editor’s note and a signature to again get on a personal level with the audience as well as giving a sneak preview of the edition as well as the journey they went on to create it. There will also be offers to subscribe for 3 issues for a cheaper price than if you were to buy it every week from your local shops, as well as receiving extra content with their issue every week as a ‘loyal member’. In addition, there will be a variety of extra online features, which will be gained through following the magazine on Twitter, ‘liking’ their page on Facebook, and subscribing to their website/joining their mailing list.

Contact Sheet

Contact Sheet

Audience Profile

From the results I have generated, I have gathered that they are not so much interested in fashion as such, but having a good time and enjoying themselves. There seems to be a lot of alcohol references but this is common in teenagers as they get older. The most common form of UK Bass Music they enjoy is Drum N' Bass, this is most probably because they enjoy the fast paced drums and the electronic noises, which can be mixed with acoustic instruments and instruments such as electric guitars.They attend events when they can and go purely for the music. If they are not at events they are at home, most probably relaxing.
Audience Profile

Model Release Form

Mood Board

Proposal

The type of magazine I am looking to create is going to be in the style of NME, except focusing more on the Drum N’ Bass/Dubstep/UK Bass Music artists rather than the usual Indie/Rock bands that have all the spotlight. As these genres are still a growing society, it would be focused at mainly the audience already indulged into the underground vibes, as well as attracting a new, curious audience to the scene. I need to create a music magazine that is aimed at a specific target audience. I have chosen this genre as it is more underground and out of the spotlight, therefore making it more challenging as there is less to compare it to, as well as doing it about something I feel passionate about. As there is a lot of cross reference with other genres, I can imitate parts from other magazines where it will be effective, e.g a hip-hop or indie magazine. Although my magazine is a complete different genre, I could still use similar layouts from other genres of magazine such NME, Q etc. This genre is very underground and unique, therefore you should be able to tell what the genre is; just by looking at the cover of the magazine. My layout must represent the genre, and the models will have to be dressed in the appropriate way. The target audience I have selected for my magazine is teenagers from the ages of 14 to young adults of the age 30. These are my intended audience because these are the people who are most likely to be interested in this style of music, as they have grown up and into the genre, as well as newer fans who have come to like it. These people are most likely to have money to buy the magazine as they can start earning their own money, which I intend to sell at a reasonable price on a weekly basis. As well as the age group, the social classes B-E will be targeted for the magazine, especially students, who are social class E due to their student loans. And the others have been selected because these people will be able to afford the magazine and they will also have the general interest for the magazine. My magazine will feature a young, underground musician on the front cover who will be doing an interview inside the magazine. The interview will be advertised on the front cover along with other sell lines to engage the public. Lastly, my magazine will be published by IPC who are one of the leading magazine publishers in the UK. I have chosen them as they already publish NME, who’s layout is similar to the one which I had in mind.
My magazine will focus more on the mainstream artists of the genres, as this will attract the widest audience possible therefore generating the most money. I will also include a double page spread every week on new artists who deserve recognition but don’t have the promotion they need to get known. My magazine will also include features such as gigs and shows, including sound system reviews for all the tech-heads, as well as best song/mix of the night. There will also be an atmosphere rating as well as a recommendations for seeing the artist live next time, e.g take a bottle of water. I will include interviews from the most mainstream artists more than the underground ones as this will attract the main audience. Although, if the underground artist has an interesting story I will give them a whole double page spread to themselves as if they were a mainstream artist. I will also include interviews with a DJ/producer and how he/she feels the scene has changed over the years. This interview will be around 1000 words and take up a whole double page spread, as well as maybe another one for an introductory page. I could also have reviews in my magazine to allow the reader to get an insight into what they may have missed, or are thinking about doing. There will be plenty of images, as actions speak louder than words, and this will also make it more interesting on the eye for the audience. I will ensure the images will be eye-catching and making the audience take time to look closely at them to analyse them fully.
I feel that my magazine will succeed as it is unique in the market and there are no magazines that I know of doing the same genre of music and offering the same information that I am providing. I will be running competitions weekly to attend events, which all include VIP treatment, therefore the term ‘VIP’ will entice the reader and want the chance to win, therefore having to purchase the magazine.

Colour Connotations

Colour Connotations

Here is a video of my preliminary task and all the layers used to build up the final, overall image.

Diary Entry Number One
Week Beginning 12/9/2011
Week Ending 19/9/2011
In my first week of AS media, I was asked to create a front cover and contents page for a school-based magazine using pervious skills and gaining more skills on Adobe Photoshop CS3. I found this easy as I did GCSE media where we had to do a similar project creating a magazine front page, contents page and double page spread, as well as previous skills on Photoshop. I am excited about beginning my task. As my new Media project commences I hope to achieve and learn more skills than I did throughout GCSE, as well as applying my old skills to the new project.


Diary Entry Number Two
Week Beginning 19/9/2011
Week Ending 26/9/2011
This week for my Media Studies AS Level, I had to analyse three front covers and three contents pages. This started off easy as I only had to find images to annotate, although I found it difficult remembering every single theory and all the key terms to annotate the pages. If we hadn’t completed these, we were asked to complete them for homework. I had trouble accessing them due to the fact they were on the school servers, which I was unable to access from home, although I managed to retrieve the document and finish the task.


Diary Entry Number Three
Week Beginning 26/9/2011
Week Ending 3/10/2011
This week we were given a similar task to the week before except this week we had to evaluate double page spreads to gain an understanding of how they work in music magazines as well as getting ideas to incorporate into our own work. I found this relatively easy as the task from the week before had refreshed my brain a little, although I felt as if I was still lacking detail and not completing the task as fully as I would have liked. I think I will edit the analyses when I have a bit of spare time to catch up on school work. Again, we were assigned to finish these for homework, and again I had the same problem as the week before, although I did still manage to finish them all for the Monday lesson.


Diary Entry Number Four
Week Beginning 3/10/2011
Week Ending 10/10/2011
This weeks task was to log onto a website called Prezi (prezi.com), which is an online version of PowerPoint, except with a lot more perks and makes it a lot more interesting to watch and interact with. I used Prezi to explain the Codes and Conventions of Music Magazine. I found this very straight forward, and answered questions that I created in my mind. Although this was probably not the best solution and yet again, I feel as if it was too vague. Once I have completed all my design work, as that is where I am most likely to finish early, as well as having a high standard of work, I will return and polish up these word documents to make sure they are on the same level as my designs.


Diary Entry Number Five
Week Beginning 10/10/2011
Week Ending 17/10/2011

Media Key Concepts Report on Prezi

Key Concepts Report

Media Key Concepts Report on Prezi