On Saturday 4th of September 2004 Simon Cowell made sure that the weekends would never be the same again. Now as we are well into the current series, the seventh overall, surely we’ve seen everything this TV show has to offer…..right? Well although the show is dragging on a bit it stills proves to be as shocking and controversial as ever. After Sunday’s episode we were all left saying “OMG!!!” after Geordie style icon Cheryl Cole didn’t put through Gamu into the live shows and instead put two other girls, who lets face it fell flat on their faces and their notes. The public was left shocked. And it wasn’t long before the reaction of the public took to face book like wild fire, well it was the perfect status update moment. Groups were made, protests began and Cheryl’s security were increased, scared much? Eh Chezza!?
The best is yet to come as after Cheryl was bitched about and trashed talked all over the country it emerged that Gamu was facing deportation after some complications with her mothers visa. This has since developed into a full blown out of control race row. This then was unleashed onto face book where groups such as, “Cheryl, just because Africa gave you malaria, don’t take it out on Gamu” were like fuel to the on going fire. Cheryl was branded a racist and apparently was sent death threats.
One positive thing came out of all this drama is that it become the most talked about show that week, which included news reports, newspaper headlines or just in regular conversations, which lived up to the saying that “bad publicity is good publicity”. Still not convinced? Well viewing figures also increased and the amount of overall calls nearly doubled the amount that was set on last years first show.
There was hope for Gamu in the form of the new twist on the show, Wildcard, which enables the judges to select another candidate, from their categories who they originally rejected at the judge's houses stage, back into the competition. Gamu was not given the wild card, ouch. For Cheryl this hasn’t been her year first the divorce, then malaria and now this. Can she get back on track? What will become of poor Gamu? All will be answered in the near future.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Analyse of a Music Magazine Cover and Article
Rolling Stone Magazine
Cover
The cover consists of one image, the main cover image. This image takes up the whole of the cover which allows all attention to be on the image. This makes the selling point of the magazine clear because of this. The image itself draws all your attention because of the nature of the image, it shows three of the cast members of ‘True Blood’ naked with blood smeared all over there bodies but allowing their modesty to be hidden. This immediately sets the tone of what the magazine will feature, this being an adult tone/theme.
Text used on the cover is in a white font, this allows the text to stand out but not as dramatic and ’in your face’ as the main cover image used, which also is applied to the masthead of the magazine, it still keeps the same traditional iconic style but changes the font so that the focus can be on the image.
The layout of this issue of the magazine is changed, when compared to other issues, as it only has two plug’s used on the cover. The first one used is located at the bottom of the left hand side of the cover and details what the image and main article will be about where the other plug used is located at the very top of the cover in the form of a banner which highlights all the other articles that will also be featured in thee magazine. Again as I have previously said the layout has changed to allow the attention from the audience to be focused on the main cover image.
Article
The Joy of Vampire Sex. The schlocky, sensual secrets behind the success of ‘True Blood’.
The style and language used in the article is again a very adult tone, which helps keep focus on the target audience. The issue’s and content within the article focus’ on the views and how the show is perceived by the audience from the three leading cast members, Anna Paquin, Alexander Skarsgard and Steven Moyer who are also featured on the cover of the magazine. It details about how they got involved in the show and dealing with stuff, such as nudity, on the show. The article does talks about how the show is misconceived and how it isn’t about sex, gore or gay persecution but its telling a love story, self fulfillment, repression and letting go of the things that define you to find the real person underneath.
As you can probably tell this is a very formal article which would also appeal to the demographic and keeps up with the rest of the adult tone of the issue of the magazine.
The font used is a small font, which allows more information to included in the article, it is also black in the article but when text is used with the images in the article it is white. In particular on the second part of the article the group of images used are titled ‘Blood Ties’. again the text is white but that helps stand out from the red background which is also used to represent and relate to the ‘Blood’ used in the title of the images.
The layout consists of three column’s on each page. The images that are used in the article are above and takes up most of the 4th and 5th column’s in the article. There is a quote used on the opposite side of the pages with the images on, which breaks up the article.
I think it does fit the demographic and the target audience as the codes and conventions they have used all relate to the idea of an adult setting and tone and with the target audience adults it fits in perfectly.
Cover
The cover consists of one image, the main cover image. This image takes up the whole of the cover which allows all attention to be on the image. This makes the selling point of the magazine clear because of this. The image itself draws all your attention because of the nature of the image, it shows three of the cast members of ‘True Blood’ naked with blood smeared all over there bodies but allowing their modesty to be hidden. This immediately sets the tone of what the magazine will feature, this being an adult tone/theme.
Text used on the cover is in a white font, this allows the text to stand out but not as dramatic and ’in your face’ as the main cover image used, which also is applied to the masthead of the magazine, it still keeps the same traditional iconic style but changes the font so that the focus can be on the image.
The layout of this issue of the magazine is changed, when compared to other issues, as it only has two plug’s used on the cover. The first one used is located at the bottom of the left hand side of the cover and details what the image and main article will be about where the other plug used is located at the very top of the cover in the form of a banner which highlights all the other articles that will also be featured in thee magazine. Again as I have previously said the layout has changed to allow the attention from the audience to be focused on the main cover image.
Article
The Joy of Vampire Sex. The schlocky, sensual secrets behind the success of ‘True Blood’.
The style and language used in the article is again a very adult tone, which helps keep focus on the target audience. The issue’s and content within the article focus’ on the views and how the show is perceived by the audience from the three leading cast members, Anna Paquin, Alexander Skarsgard and Steven Moyer who are also featured on the cover of the magazine. It details about how they got involved in the show and dealing with stuff, such as nudity, on the show. The article does talks about how the show is misconceived and how it isn’t about sex, gore or gay persecution but its telling a love story, self fulfillment, repression and letting go of the things that define you to find the real person underneath.
As you can probably tell this is a very formal article which would also appeal to the demographic and keeps up with the rest of the adult tone of the issue of the magazine.
The font used is a small font, which allows more information to included in the article, it is also black in the article but when text is used with the images in the article it is white. In particular on the second part of the article the group of images used are titled ‘Blood Ties’. again the text is white but that helps stand out from the red background which is also used to represent and relate to the ‘Blood’ used in the title of the images.
The layout consists of three column’s on each page. The images that are used in the article are above and takes up most of the 4th and 5th column’s in the article. There is a quote used on the opposite side of the pages with the images on, which breaks up the article.
I think it does fit the demographic and the target audience as the codes and conventions they have used all relate to the idea of an adult setting and tone and with the target audience adults it fits in perfectly.
Friday, 15 October 2010
Research into Music Magazine's
Research for Target Audience
To research my target audience I’ve created a short survey with a few questions and published it onto my facebook profile so people could answer the survey. The questions I am going to include are what genre of rock people listen to, with suggestions, what age the participant is, with suggestions of age groups and finally if they are male or female. Here is my evidence of my survey in use:
Callum Sands This is for my Media Studies research, so please comment answering the following questions if you can:
See MoreOctober 14 at 5:50pm · · ·
Callum Sands This is for my Media Studies research, so please comment answering the following questions if you can:
What genre of rock do you prefer to listen to, if any?:
Alternative rock
Post-grunge
...Pop rock
Electronic rock
Screamo
What age are you?
13-19 20-30 31-40 41+
Are you male or female?
See MoreOctober 14 at 5:50pm · · · 
The results from my survey show that the most favourite genre of rock people prefer/listen to is alternative rock. So now I have the genre of rock my magazine will be about. The age range the magazine will be aimed at is teenagers aged 13-19, as this was the age range that was most answered in the survey. The magazine will also be aimed at teenagers, from the results from the survey shown above.
Overall my magazine will be about and feature alternative rock and will be aimed at teenagers aged 13-19.
Research into Similar Products
I am going to get some examples of rock magazines, covering several genres, and I am going to compare and discuss the codes and conventions they share. Here are my examples of covers:
One of the first things you notice about these magazines is that they only use a few colours in their text. NME uses the colours black, yellow and white where as Kerrang use red, white, black and brown. As you can see both magazines use white and black text at some point on the cover. Then they use another colour, typically a brighter colour, to allow important information to standout from both the rest of the text and the main cover image. Moving on to the main cover image, both covers featured a band or an artist that people know of or heard of in the rock industry. NME features rock icon Courtney Love where as Kerrang has chosen a more current recent artist to be featured, this being scream band Bring Me the Horizon. Both photographs take up the majority of the cover and are taken in a mid shot/close up, in particular NME where as Kerrang have other photographs of other artists or bands which are also featured in the magazine. This can also be an example of a plug being used on the cover of Kerrang, a plug is a convention that tells you what’s going to be featured in the magazine, so here its telling us that’s there a poster special. Other examples of plugs being used in Kerrang magazine include “Metallica Storm the UK
Research into the Genre of chosen Magazine
The results form my survey proved that alternative rock is the genre of rock that most people listen to. So now I am going to research into this genre giving an example of a magazine as well as describing the genre and including famous/current artists and bands in the alternative rock scene.
Alternative Rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock that first came around in the 1980’s in the form of R.E.M. and then became more developed throughout the 1990’s. Alternative rock is infused with many other subgenres within itself including grunge, Goth and Indie. R.E.M. became one of the first big Alternative rock bands in 80’s and successfully breaking into the mainstream charts from the underground scene from which they were originally came from. Alternative rock had a fresh new face as it made a transition into the 90’s with breakthrough band Nirvana and later subgenres such as Britpop emerged with the likes of Oasis and Blur making a splash onto the charts. Nowadays alternative rock has taken form in the likes of The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more recently in 2010 The Pretty Reckless.
An example of an alternative rock magazine is Q magazine. Here is an example of a Q magazine cover:
As you can see it conveys the typical characteristics featured on a cover of a rock magazine.
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Skill Progression September-October 2010
Digital Camera Basics
Framing
Framing is used to help bring the subject or object that you are taking an photograph of into focus.
Composition
Composition is used to help find the placement of the subject in the image. You find the focus points in the image and crop the image to focus on the subject. This is an example of composition used in my own photography:
This is the original image:
Using composition:
Rule of Thirds
The Rule of Thirds is a compositional rule that helps you visualise an image to have nine equal parts. Important aspect of the image should be in alignment with the intersections or power points in the frame. This is an example of The Rule of Thirds:
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Alternative Rock/ Post Grunge (I can't choose)
What age are you?
13-19
...
Are you male or female?
maleSee More