Magazine Preliminary Task

For the Preliminary Task i had to make my own front page for my own newspaper and make it look presentable so i had to make up my own stories and name for newspapers and layout and due to the fact that i had a lot of space left i put two random adverts up.
The Main Story is about a student who has put himself in charge and tries to clean the school and keep good behaviour by Stopping people littering, Stopping Smokers and Stopping fights.
The second story is about a different student that got kicked out of school for having a street race and ended up getting caught by the police after crashing into the principles car and explained his story.

From doing this task i have learned how to make a newspaper/magazine on the computer which will be useful for when i have to make a music magazine for my project, Also i have learned how to do a medium shot and how to use it for a text piece

Codes and Conventions for Magazine

My Magazine will be based on Rock music. The issue i am working on will be based on the bands Dragonforce, Avenges Sevenfold and Fall Out Boy and it will have news that will draw peoples attention like a new album, or a gig, a new Guitarist/Drummer/Lead Singer

It will need a picture to make it look believable and then use up as much space as i can with information and pictures and it will be really informative and and offer free merchandise in competitions and/or Giveaways so that people could read the magazine and want to enter a competition and win a T-Shirt, Hoodie anything that they like in the magazine.

I will make the front page look big and bold to stand out from the rest of the magazines and then mine will be picked instead and then it would be a popular magazine. The front page will look interesting because i will have big bold writing for the title and have a main image that will take up as much space as possible and have one of the bands i picked (Avenged Sevenfold, Fall Out Boy or Dragonforce) news on the front to draw people in and then have like posters or a CD giveaway, Also for my magazine because it will be for Rock bands i will have to use Rock type colours like black, dark red maybe some bright colours to catch the attention so it will stand out to Rock fans/listeners.

From doing this task it will bring me one step closer to making my music magazine because now i know what the basic layout will be, The colours i will need to use, What the contents will be, What the genre will be for the magazine and what the story i will need to make will be. So i am prepared for the music magazine making stage of the course.

Audience Research

For my Audience Research i have made a questionnaire to give to people to fill in and hand back for me to sort out for my magazine and it isn't one of those 20 questions and pointless questions its just a couple of questions that go straight to the point for what i want to know

my questionnaire goes like:

Music Questionnaire

1. Whats your favourite Music Genre?

   []         []          []            []            []

Rock    RnB     Pop      Hip/Hop Other

1a. If other what kind………………………..

2. Whats your favourite artist/band?

……………………………………………..

3. How often do you listen to music?

………………………………………………...

4. How often do you buy albums/CDs/music off iTunes?

…………………………………………………….

5. How many artists/bands do you have on your mp3 player/iPod/phone?

…………………………………………………................

Thank you for your time J

Our feed back from giving 10 questionnaires we had:
1.
Rock  7
RnB 1
Pop 0
Hip/Hop 0
Other (Metal) 2

2.
Dragonforce 1
Fall Out Boy 1
Avenged Sevenfold 5
Linkin Park 2
Slipknot 1

3.
All the Time 7
Not alot 1
A few hours a week 1
A few hours a month 1
Never 0

4.Itunes downloads?
0-10 - 7
11-25 - 2
26-60 - 0
61-80 - 1
81-99 - 0
100+ - 0

5. How many bands/singers?
0-10 - 2
11-30 - 7
31-60 - 0
61-90 - 1
91+ - 0
From this i have learned that if people would fill in a questionnaire it would have to be a couple of questions and not go on and on as it will get boring after a while and they will refuse to do it because they are not interested anymore also that questionnaire is one of the easiest ways to find audience research

The Preliminary Task for filming

Preliminary task from Ben Lyons on Vimeo.
For our preliminary task for Media Studies ALevel we had to film.

• Somebody walking into a room.
• Walking across the room.
• Sitting down.
• And then starting a conversation.

As easy as that sounds we had to use different camera shots for example we had to use match on actions and over the shoulder shots so we had to film some parts more than once e.g. opening the door for the match on action and the dialogue for the over the shoulder shots
So me and my friends Curtis and Liam went out and filmed this task and the video you see above is what we got after Liam edited it.

Doing this Preliminary task taught me how hard it is to film, edit and act. This is because if you are filming you need to concentrate on either the main character (Curtis) or the main events (Curtis walking into the room) and you cannot cut concentration. When acting you have to make sure that everything is 100% perfect as you are the centre of attention, if you have to do a match on action you have to do the EXACT same thing the second time as you did the first time also if you have to do a match on action but the filming again on a different day you will need the same clothes as you were wearing before so it doesn't mess up the film. When editing you will need to work hard as you are left with a lot of little clips and you are meant to make it a bigger movie and you have to make it without any jumpy bits (where one second your walking towards the door next second you already walked through)

Textual Analysis

i have made an analysis on the 2 magazines as you see above this could help me when I'm making my music magazine so i would look at how KERRANG and NME do their music magazines and try some of their techniques on mine and hope that it would work

From doing a analysis on these two magazine covers i have learned how the popular magazines attract attention to their magazines for readers to buy. They use bright colours, big bold titles, Big font, a lot of pictures of bands to draw in people stories that nobody knew about that will reel people in. i will try using these techniques on my magazine

Detailed explanation of my Magazine

My Magazine would have a list of bands that are popular to all the teenagers and write about them and make news about them and make it look interesting so that someone will look at it and feel like they need to buy that magazine and then it would be popular and a lot more people would want to buy it.

I would be aiming for my top two played bands on my Ipod which is Dragonforce and Avenged Sevenfold which both are metal bands and would make it easier and i could base the magazine on like a MTV would so make it multiple music genres so it would be interesting for everyone and not just a rock magazine that wouldn't be interesting to everybody

From doing this task i have learned what kind of thing a magazine maker would go through to make a magazine and what to put on it or in it and what type of music or genres to do but luckily i had two top bands that were metal and not one rock and other rap

Ideas For Target Audience Research

The main idea for finding out what people like would be to interview them with a camera then see what different people like and their views

Other Ideas would be
Using a questionnaire to find out but a questionnaire is a bit boring and it wouldn't keep people entertained and they would refuse to do it and then you wouldn’t get any information
Using a board game to find out what people like using question cards or like a Trivia Pursuit method to figure it all out
Could use a online quiz on popular social website Facebook but most people would ignore it and then you wouldn’t get any results if people refuse to do it

From doing this task i have learned that different people would want to do a certain way of finding out their audience research because some people would like to do questionnaires but some may like a interview instead and some might like a quiz on Facebook or any other website on the Internet so for my audience research i would go for a quick and easy Questionnaire

Target Audience for Music Magazine

Age:
The target audience for my music magazine would be for teenager (15-26) who like music and if they see their favourite bands on the cover they would purchase the magazine to read about the band, the reason it would be for teenagers- grown ups is because not many small young children would want to read about Green Day or Dragonforce and it would be a lot to read for that child and too much to take in, but for teenagers they would read a magazine like that without any problems and would take it all in

Gender:
The gender would be unisex as it would be ok for males and females to read and then there wouldn't be any sexism problems as females would like heavy metal or emo music so it would be fair to base it on both genders rather than pick one individual one

Socio-economic Status:
This is going to be for the groups:
C1, C2, D and E this is because all these middle-lower class people would look at the magazine and would buy it because they are interested in the bands and would like to read more about them and find out where there next gig is and if they would perform near the reader

From doing this task i have learned that it can be hard to make a magazine because you need to know who will buy it what Age group, Gender and what category of Socio-economic status (Wealth) will read it this can be hard when it will be your first try of making a magazine as you don't know what everyone wants or likes

Music Magazine genre ideas

The film idea wasn't going as expected so instead i decided to make a music magazine and because i am into any type of genre of music had to look at the top two played bands on my iPod and it came up with Avenged Sevenfold and Dragonforce luckily they are both a type of metal band so it would be easier
to make a magazine than a film

From doing this task i have learnt that there are many genres for music e.g. Pop, RnB, Screamers (non stop screaming down the microphone), Rap, Rock, Metal, Heavy Metal, Emo, Dubstep and different people like different types of music based on their personality e.g. a Emo person would like Emo, Rock, Screamers, maybe metal Genres this is because of their personality so that they like the emotion they feel from listening to it because a Emo would not listen to Rap, RnB, Dubstep because it does not suit their personality

Idea Change

I have Decided to not make the film but i will be making a music magazine instead it would be a lot easier as i am working on my own and would not be able to make a film in the deadlines as i would have to plan and then storyboard, film, edit and make it look good would be too much for me considering i don't know what im doing

But with the magazine it would be a lot easier as it is just a front page a contents page and a double page on two of my favourite bands

Codes and Conventions for film

When making a film you would need to sort out all the props that you may need to use to make the film work, the typical actions that the characters would do e.g. if it is a horror slasher film the character NEEDS to be scared to make the film more believable, Also for films you need some typical character stereotypes like:

• The Romantic couple
• The Person who knows what is happening
• The person who dies first
• The person that the audience wants to die
• The survivor/s
• The character who tries to make all the jokes

Most horror slasher films would have that kind of thing.
Also Horror films would have a storyline to keep the audience on the edge of their seats for you to scare the life out of them like a usual

• Group of friends go to a Old building (accidentally lock themselves in) or a forest (would end up getting lost)
• The group would hear weird noises and would see a Mysterious figure
• The group would then get scared and run away in different directions and split up and lose each other
• The murderer would hunt them down and kill them one at a time as he looks around for them and uses his knife,sickle or any kind of weapon
• 9 times out of 10 a few survivors would find each other, make a group, protect themselves and then defeat the psycho killer and escape

If i was to make a horror slasher film it would be like that

From doing this task i have learned that you have to make the film match the genre 100% and that the storyline is interesting and makes sense rather than something stupid that doesn't work and makes no sense at all

Target Audience ideas for film

Age.
My target audience is going to be a Teenager to grown ups.
basically it is a horror paranormal film so it would be too scary for young children and babies, Teenagers these days are into all the new Paranormal Activity Films and adults would enjoy watching a horror film this is because they will make people jump and might scare them and then they would tell their friends about how good it is and then everyone will know about.

Gender.
The film will be targeted at a Unisex audience which means it is for males and females this is because not all males like horror films, not all females hate horror films so this is for any gender to watch

Socio-Economic Status
C1,C2,D and E this is because all the middle-lower class people can watch it and find it interesting and would enjoy it and would try to purchase the DVD. But the higher class people would watch it and hate it and not understand anything and never want to watch it again

By doing this task i have learnt that people have many different categories on what films they like depending on age, gender, and their socio-economic status (their wealth) because most high class people wouldn't want to watch a thriller but a lower-middle class would love to watch films like that and lower class people wouldn't want to watch a film about rich people acting really high class because it will get boring