Photo shoot planning

Photo Planning.

Where? – I will be taking the pictures for my magazine at school, this is because I would like to have a white background to my pictures, so that I could easily edit the backgrounds to anything that I feel would fit, and the school has many rooms with just white walls. Also you can get a lot of instruments at school for props for the pictures, so that it would make it more suitable for  

For the photo shoot, I will use the same model throughout the entirety of the magazine, and they will be "The band" this helps keep familiarity with the magazine.

For the photo shoot I will have the models that I am using perform in the poses that have been shown on my front page mock up, so that it would be much easier to recreate the most magazine, and do it in an eye catching way, that could prompt the target audience to purchase the magazine, so that they could see what else is in the magazine. I will be using a few of my piers as models for my magazine, this can be helpful as I would be able to get a large variety of pictures, and from this variety I could possibly find a picture that may be better suited to the front cover than I had originally expected them to be.

I could also get my model to pose with an instrument, this would help for the picture to create a much more authentic feel to it, as nearly every other magazine that I had looked at whilst researching them that had an artist on the front page, seemed to have an instrument or talk about the artists band on the front cover, because of this, I feel that it is very necessary that my model be using a guitar or other instrument that leaves no confusion to what they're supposed to be.

Props will not be used for every single picture that I will take, this is because when someone is in a band, they do not carry their instruments around with them, as they would only really have them when they're getting ready to play a show, because of this not all the pictures that I will be taking will have an instrument with them, as it would not be necessary to have one in every picture, and could make the picture quite irrelevant.

As well as taking pictures, I will also have to consider all the different camera angles that I would have to do for the shots that would be needed for the magazine. The usage of camera angles on the model could make sure that the pictures aren't just boring, straight on, but instead would create a different feel and give a better impression of the model, this could change the feel of the magazine front cover depending on how the image is taken.

I was thinking that for the shot of the model I would get a full body shot of the main artist, playing their instrument, this would then be put onto the front page as the main article picture, as many magazines have either a medium shot or a long shot of their main article feature, so this will help to create the feel of this.

Front page

After creating my first front cover, I asked for some feedback off of some piers in my class, and based on their feedback I decided to change my front cover, based on the feedback that I managed to get I come to the conclusion that my previous front cover had too many pictures, and that the pictures they had provided were of a low quality, and the page wasn't laid out in a decent manor. So I decided to make some changes to my front cover, and by changes, I started again from scratch with brand new pictures of a much better quality, I did some research on other magazines such as Kerrang! and Rolling Stones, and decided to use a main larger picture, with an artist who was holding an instrument, to give a clear idea that it's a rock magazine, and helps it look more like something that my target audience would like to see, and further more based on the research that I had done, I decided to change how the writing was laid out across the page, and to the newer lay out, this should give it a much more rock feel.

I kept the same colour scheme for the magazine, as the black colour helps to signify that the magazine is a rock magazine, and the darker red colours help to keep the feel of the theme consistent, and I used the white and yellow colours for the smaller text because it stood out against the black background, and the white and yellow alternating helped to keep interest in the text so that it didn't start coming across as boring.

I used a custom font for the title of the magazine, and the font for the rest of the front page is called "Stencil", I chose to use this font because it was rough and gives off the rock feel that would go well with the theme of the magazine, it helps to give the feel of the Rock star life and the feel of the magazine.

I also included a a sticker on the front of the magazine cover, the purple and white outlined circle, this is an effective use of a plug, I decided to do this because upon researching many other magazines, I noticed that a lot of the magazines also did a give away or offers on the front page of their magazines, giving it an incentive for the target audience to buy it, and adding professionalism to the magazine. use of the words 'Free' or 'Offer' help to catch the eye of the target audience, and help to get them to buy the media product.

Double Page Spread

This is my final mark up of my double page spread, the theme is based largely on the styles of Kerrang! magazine, and how that do their double page spreads.

The whole focus of the double page spread is an interview on the band "Kill It With Awesome", the main musician for the band is based in the centre of all the writing, so the interview bends around the musician, and he's playing his guitar, so that it's very obvious that he's a guitarist. I also placed other images on the side of the double page spread and made sure they were relevant to the main article, as they're shown as the bands manager, and a member of the band  who's now recovering from a drug addiction, they're placed there to keep interest in the decoder to keep them reading the magazine.

I decided to go with a black background to keep the same theme as the contents page, and the front page, this kept the theme of the magazine consistent, and this helps to keep a more professional look and feel to the magazine. One of the main points of the double page spread is how the writing bends around the centre blacked out picture of the artist, this along with the bold red letters spelling out the bands name in the top left of the page, these two aspects of the page work together to show that the band is the main point of the whole double page spread. The colour that I chose for the bands name to be (red) helps to generate the feeling of rock, as red is a passionate colour, and is an energetic colour, where as something such as green would have been a much calmer colour, and the colour green is associated more with grunge music, so it would not have gone well with the theme of the magazine.

I used the style of font for the bands name and introduction because it was a rough army style of font, this helped to give the rough feel of the band, and is associated with the rock star theme.

Front page

This is my magazine front cover, this was part of the coursework for my magazine.

Work Diary

12/9/2011
Today we had to annotate a magazine that we liked, and write a comment on why that particular magazine caught our eye, we annoted the magazine from a list of points that we were given, (Points can be seen on post "Magazine Annotation")

I chose to do a Rollingstone magazine featuring Johnny Depp as Captian Jack Sparrow, it didn't contain all of the points that we were given to list, such as a Plug, however i could still use the piece as Rollingstone magazine is a very famous magazine today, then i uploaded the piece to my Media Studies AS Blogs.

Magazine Annotation