Shotlist

Interview Questions

Today in Ms Burne's lesson we discussed writing interview questions

Josh Lavaly is my chosen artist that I will be interviewing on Thursday, the following questions I will ask are:

1. Do you think being from Sierra Leone and growing up in London, has influenced your music? How? 
2. When did you first find out that you can sing?
3. It's been said that you sing like a cross between R.Kelly and Neyo. The readers want to know, who inspires you?
4. What would be your dream collaboration?
5. Would you ever consider branching out to different entertainment like acting or dancing?
6. You seem like you’re full of life and exuberance, what keeps you motivated to get up in the morning?
7. You look very stylish, where do you get your dress sense from and how important is your image when it comes to your artistry?
8. So all the ladies want to know, are you single?
9. Do you have anything coming up that people need to know about?

QUICK QUESTIONS

Favourite food:

First CD:

Favourite item of clothing:
Jordans or Pradas:

Snapback or Beanie:

Suited up or a tracky:

Most expensive thing you've bought:

Beyonce or Rihanna:

Favourite Soul singer of all time:

Bye bye Joel, Hello Josh.

So Joel Baker can no longer do my magazine due to loads of work (awwww)

So, I've found another and my final person by the name of JOSH LAVALY!!!! (wooo hoooo)

 

Deciding colour schemes for my magazine

When I did my focus groups I noticed that many people said they looked at colour schemes when they first saw a magazine and that they liked bright popping colours. However soul magazines do not normally have a massively popping colour scheme. So to choose the colour scheme for my magazine I will use a colour wheel to show me what colours work well together and don't.

Collage of Male Soul Artists

Doing more research into Soul music I realised that most of the artists’ pictures have been taken in black and white. I think this is mainly to do with the time period soul music was about, there weren’t many coloured pictures being taken. In the 21st century soul artists still use greyscale in a lot of their pictures. Apart from greyscale soul artist take pictures using sepia and earthy colours like greens, browns, reds and oranges. Most pictures seem to be in a photography studio or sometimes on a stage or by an instrument.  From this I collected images of male Soul artists and made a collage. This will benefit me when it comes to posing my feature artists, the location and the colours schemes I am going to choose.

Flatplan Draft

Yesterday in class, Ms Burne made us peer assess each others flatplan designs.
We marked each others work on a mark scheme with the scores of Minium, Basic, Proficient and Excellent
The results were as follows.

• Appropriate material for target audience - Proficient
• Understanding of conventions of layout and page designs - Excellent
• Awareness for variety in fonts and text size - Proficient
• Accurate of language and register - Proficient
• Integration of text and image - Excellent
• Planning of the phoot - Proficient

After these results I know that I need to improve all the points that say proficient to excellent so that I can achieve a successful magazine.

Focus Group

Here is the videos for the focus group I uploaded.

Reader Profile - Isabelle

Hi, my name is Isabelle and I'm 17 years old. I live in Bermondsey with my parents and little brother and I go to college in London. I'm studying AS music, drama, sport and English lit. Music is my life and I write and play my own music. I absolutely adore Jessie J. I've seen her twice in concert and she was amazing, my favourite song of hers is entitled 'mama knows best'. I would say my favourite genre of music would be R'n'B/Soul and I love buying magazines such as Vibe which I have subscribed to and get monthly. This magazine features artists like Rihanna, Chris Brown and Melanie Fiona who I also like. I love to go to events showcasing up and coming artist around London, and I've also had the privilege of performing in a couple. I am 100% focused on my A levels as a year 12 student and hope to achieve the best I possibly can and music helps me do that. With music I can escape to a different place and let it all still relate to my exams which is why I love it.

Results and analysis of online survey

Flatplans

This week I am going to be designing my flatplans for my magazine
What I MUST do are the following

·         It must be as detailed as possible with text and colour completed. It should look like your completed magazine will do (apart from your interview).

·         I should show how your research has influenced the design of the flatplan and should include a minimum of 4 different images.

·         The design can and will change and adapt but you must always explain and justify these changes

·         At the end, the finished magazine should be recognisable from the flatplan

My final feature artist.. hopefully!!!!

So on Friday 11th January 2013 I went to a gig where I saw many up and coming artists perform their music. I took a whole lot of pictures and met with my feature artist in person.

JOEL BAKER.

His set was amazing and to top it off he agreed to doing my magaine.

RESULT!

I will upload some of the pictures I took at a later date.

DPS

On Thursday Ms Burne showed us a double page spread in Grazia magazine with the feature celebrity being Fearne Cotton. In this lesson we analysed both the picture and the text of the DPS to understand what key features and linguistic techniques I could use in my own magazine.

Image - The image had carefully been taken so that there was enough space around it for her name, the pull quote used, the standfirst and the text. The look they went for was a sepia, vintage looking look which went very well with the clothes she's wearing from her clothing line which is what the article is about. This shows the link between the image and the text. Also the way she is placed and her facial expression says a lot in contrast to the background as she looks quite seductive and provocative whereas the background is in a nice, natural and rural setting. This links well to the pull quote 'I'm not so nice - I can be a bitch' and the 'F' in her name 'Fearne' being in red shows again, a seductive almost dangerous side to her.

Standfirst - Very short, only two sentences which engages readers to read. This standfirst uses linguistic techniques such as:

• rhetorical question
• alliteration
• rhyme
• rule of three

Using these language devices helps the reader feel more connected to the feature celebrity and the article.

Main text - The beginning paragraphs of the text are informal and chatty before the interview starts. The article is more of a story based interview than a question and answer interview. The text uses linguistic techniques such as alliteration and personification. Punctuation is also used well.

What I understood from this DPS is that in order for everything to link, work well together and have a finished complete look, every aspect needs to be thought about such as:

• image
• text
• colour scheme
• font
• type of shot used
• headmast
• pull quotes
• font sizes
• the way the artist is placed and how much room I need to have around them
• language

Now because I know all of this, I believe that I can accomplish putting all of these things in my magazine so that it turns out to be the same standard as a real magazine.

Focus Group

A couple of days ago, Miss Mottram told us to create a focus group analysing music magazines of my chosen genre. I've chosen 'Contemporary Soul' however, due to that being really specific, I've chosen to analyse 'R'n'B & Soul' magazines.

Here are the questions I'm going to ask the people taking part in my focus group.
The video will be uploaded soon!


 

Contemporary Soul

Questions

Front Covers

· When you look at this two front cover what genre do think this is?

· What attracts you to the front cover of a magazine? Is it the image? Pull quotes? Colours? Font?

· What does the price mean to you? Do you feel that you will buy magazines for this price. If not what is the maximum you will pay?
 

Contents

· What attracts you to the contents page of a magazine? Is it the images? Pull quotes? Colours? Font?

· Do you read the text on this page? If not what do you want on there to make you more attracted to reading it?
 

Double Page spread

· Do you prefer seeing a lot of text or a big picture on a double page spread

· How does a double page spread draw you in? Through images or text

· Do you know the genre of the magazine from looking at it.

· How does the way the artist is dressed and the location of the image help you understand the genre? Does it?

· Are pull quotes and standfirsts important to you? Does make you feel connected to the artist or magazine more.

· Do you prefer to read these other than articles?
 

This will help me wih my magazine because I am going to review what the people have said and try to use their likes, dislikes and thoughts to guide and direct me to producing the best magazine I possibly can.

Online Survey

I did a survey asking people what attracts them to different pages of a magazine and how much they would pay for one. I've done this so when it comes to making my music magazine I will have an idea of how to produce my magazine. For example knowing how much people would really pay for a magazine will affect how much I will price my magazine.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

I'm still exploring possible features...

Perhaps I got a tad excited before, when looking for people to feature in my magazine. Anyways, I was searching around twitter for more people in different genres of music and came across this amazing new artist by the name of Joel Baker. He's incredibly talented.
Let's make his music do the rest of the talking for him.

Q magazine

Here is the other one. This is more of a mainstream magazine.

What I like about this one is that it is so colourful it attracts me instantly. However some people may find it too much. Also I like the fact that the use different stories inside the magazine to lure people into reading it. This is something I want to do in my magazine. This magazine is very good at advertising itself - where it says Q it also says "MUSIC MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR" and "THE WORLD'S GREATEST MUSIC MAGAZINE".

The one thing I would take away from this contents page is the way the images are placed on the left place instead of in a straight line. They also had a place where they were advertising the magazine by proposing subscriptions which I thought was a good idea.

This double page spread is an example of what I don't want to do for my as it doesn't look uniform.

Country magazine - Country Music People

So as I said in a previous post, I found two music magazines in WH Smithes. Here's one of them.

Personally, this front cover is too plain, which makes it boring and unexciting for me to want to read it. However, I do like the big bold title and the image is clearly thought about as the colours used and the image blend well together.

Something from the magazine which I will use in my own, is the sentences under each sub-heading in the feature section.

By here I can tell that the magazine has a clear colour scheme it uses and have stuck to it. Also it uses a drop cap at the beginning of the article which is something I want to use.

I've found the person featuring in my magazine

When I found out I was beginning my music magazine, the first thing I thought about was who I wanted to feature in it. So, I asked an up and coming musician to do it last year over Facebook.