For our AS coursework we researched front covers, contents pages and double page spreads, which helped me to understand magazine conventions in order to use them to produce a professional looking project. For example, I found that mainstream magazines, such as Q and NME, tended to have a bright colour scheme - the colour red was especially prominent as it was a colour that could appeal to both genders. Because of this I decided to use red for my flash and teasers. Also, both Q and NME had a simple colour scheme consisting of no more than three colours so it wouldn't make the pages too hectic and thus unreadable, so I decided upon a colour scheme of red, blue and black/white because of this.
I also found from my research that the artist on the front cover tended to be the main focus - they were in the center of the page with text surrounding them. For example, Blender magazine had Alicia Keys in black clothing against a white background, making her stand out more to the reader, while the masthead was placed behind her head; the teasers and flashes were on either side of her and a call out was placed around her stomach, thus framing her face. She was also looking directly at the camera, drawing the reader in. This was also true of Q, NME and Rolling Stone. For my own front cover I had my artist looking directly at the camera, like Alicia Keys did, with a flash on the right hand side of her and teasers on the left. There was a callout/ pull-quote halfway down the magazine, like Blender's and then plugs at the bottom, framing my artists face and upper body so she was the dominant aspect of the magazine.
For my A2 coursework, understanding the conventions were especially important in producing a professional looking product. I realised that appealing to the male gaze was, once again, an important convention as it was in AS. For example, in AS music magazines tended to use high camera angles for female artists, thus making the reader view them from above because of this camera angle, making them inferior. In music videos I found that lots of close up, high-angle shots of the artists face were used to firstly stress their dominance as the artists, but to also suggest that they were inferior. Also, in both music magazines and videos females tended to wear more revealing clothes - on NME's front cover Lana Del Rey wore a crop top and so did Cheryl Cole in her music video. Because of this the artist in our music video wore a lot of leggings, crop tops, shorts and similar clothes to reflect this. We also used close-up shots of her face to follow this convention as well.
From my digipack research I found that, like the video, the artist was the dominant aspect. On Katy Perry's digipack she feature on four out of five pages. Again, it follows the male gaze - shes laying down, covered by a candy cloud while looking directly at the camera.
Need to explain how I progressed from AS to A2 - looked at a variety of sources rather than five magazines for front cover, contents and double page spread
Plan
Intro - research was important - amount of research important too - as little but for A2 did more - followed the albums and different music videos each artist did. understood so much that i was able to produce three products in a limited amount of time
A2 -
AS - model/ artists on the page - A2 how they were displayed in the video - talk about how we made sure to follow conventions - close-ups - lots of footage on the artist - mise-en-scene to reflect the genre
Colour scheme - both bright - AS to attract both genders and to reflect mainstream magazines - A2 bright again - male gaze - pop genre like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift
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