Monday, 22 November 2010

My Article


Mathew Parnell
Eye Rock Article
Standfirst

Pretentious or just seeing into the future, Distortion takes a look at a young and upcoming band “Eye Rock”.

A four piece band from Liverpool, Eye Rock, consisting of lead guitarist David Short, bass player Jonny Tyler, lead singer Lewis Judge and drummer Danny Quinn, formed in 2008, and are currently hoping to set the world alight with their debut album later this year. “All Ages” is set to be released on the 2nd June 2011 but many of their singles have already been released on iTunes; their first EP will be available to download online in the very near future. Playing in simply a few local pubs and bars, it is certain that the band will definitely be taking the next step and soon performing worldwide in years to come.  Their music will be found in all top music stores under the rock genre but unlike most rock bands, these young boys, who have grown up together, seem to have a certain twist about them - their cheeky yet dark sense of humour. When I interviewed the band, they were in the process of writing an additional song to their album, showing their hard working attitude and proving they have heaps of potential.

Eye Rock’s target audience is roughly between 16-30 years old due to their strong and enticing lyrics, influenced by past experiences in their lives, such as the song “Here Without You”. Written by David Short, this song concerns the emotional passing of his grandfather – an unfortunate event that not only affected David but also the other members of the band. Despite the increasing success of their music, the four boys still consider education to be vital and study at various colleges: “We try to practice most days but with college work it can sometimes be a challenge.” Here, Lewis Judge expresses how focused the band is to further develop and expand their music, whilst keeping on top of the obstacles that schoolwork and A-levels can sometimes bring. When asked what their ultimate dream venue would be to play in, Jonny Tyler informed me of his desire to play, or even headline, Glastonbury: “There have been a number of top quality bands that have been lucky enough play at Glastonbury. To be seen as talented enough to be up there with them would be unreal.” Just by listening to the bass player, you could really feel the passion and determination in his voice to get to that stage of success. Four teenagers releasing an album is an incredible achievement that not many 16-17 year olds will have the chance to experience. The youngest member, Danny Quinn, who has only just turned 16, excitedly stated: “It feels amazing to know that your hard work and commitment to music is paying off, and, of course, the money is an added bonus!” With just under a year to wait for their highly anticipated album, there is still much work to be done, but it is widely predicted to be one of the biggest selling debut albums of the summer.

The group of best friends first attracted attention when they met up during the previous summer, putting together a music video for their own song “Glass Vase”. After the immensely positive response gained from uploading this piece to YouTube, the boys were encouraged to continue to produce and upload amateur music videos and recordings. With YouTube being an incredibly popular website worldwide, Lewis explains why the group decided to show off their talents online: “Uploading the majority of our songs onto YouTube gave us a larger, more varied, audience. So many people have reached fame through the site, but our reasoning behind it was so that there would be a wider appreciation for our music.” YouTube provides an extra platform to receive both praise and constructive criticism which would help to further improve the band, and many stars, such as Justin Bieber or Jessie J, have found sensational success through uploading videos of their music.

 Eye Rock’s main inspiration is the American rock band, Green Day. Danny explained that this is because “Green Day told it how it was, and they weren’t phased by fame and we learned a lot from their songs. I hope that one day we will inspire a group the way that they have inspired us.” The boys feel that music is a fantastic outlet to express emotions and feelings, and that this was a great motivation for them to form a group and produce music. It was lucky for the four friends to each have a talent that makes them unique to the band.

“My dad had played guitar since he was a teenager, and has been teaching me to play from the early age of about 8 years old,” David announced. “It’s so important to take part in something you enjoy – otherwise you won’t be motivated enough to give it your best shot. I love playing guitar, and I couldn’t imagine anything more exhilarating than working with my 3 best friends.”

It is certainly clear that each individual member of the band is passionate about music. In the future, the boys explain that realistically, they believe they have the potential to support similar, more established bands, like the Foo Fighters, as well as making appearances at smaller festivals such as Wakestock. However, they feel that, given the right opportunities, they could succeed beyond this, possibly holding their own arena tour. “There’s no point in limiting our goals. We need to have dreams in order to keep us aiming that little bit higher each time. We’re allowed to be a little unrealistic. Someone has to headline Glastonbury – why can’t it be us?”

Friday, 19 November 2010

Thursday, 18 November 2010

Planning Production

Planning Production
Main imageThe main image of my music magazine will be Action shot of Dave Short the lead guitarist in his band.

Cover lines
-Top ten rock songs of all time (sub- you’ll be blown away)
- On the road with Green Day (sub- Travel with one of the greatest bands ever!)
- A life in the month of David Grohl (sub- if you love Foo Fighters you’ll love this!)
- Gig of the month (sub-This months best gig)
- Exclusive interview with Eye Rock  (sub- Read about all you need to know about Eye rock)
Contents page
Page 4-Top ten rock songs of all time 
page5-New album of a band page
11-Gig of the month
page 15- Foo fighters interview
page 24- Interview with the worlds greatest rock band gamer
page 28-Top 20 songs of the month
page 36-hottest band at the moment
page39- A month in the life of David Grohl
page 48- New instruments
page 56-Album reviews
page 65- Funny pictures of the month
page 67-Dave short and Eye Rock interview
The images I will use on my contents page will be ones from the Gig

Double page spread Article
The article I am going to write on my Double Page spread is an Interview with Dave Short and the photographs I am going to use are Action shots of him Playing music.

Publication Plan

Publication Plan
Title:  Distortion

Positioning statement: Louder than words

Price: £2.99

Distribution: Newsagents and supermarkets

Rationale: The approach of my music magazine is from the reader’s perspective. It will contain interviews, articles and pictures of the hottest new bands which is what the readers want to see.

Style: The style of my music magazine is very informal using humour but not afraid to offer strong comment on events. The music magazine is for fans of the Rock/indie genre and will use simple vocabulary and slang to make the magazine seem friendly.

Images will be the dominant feature of my article.
Regular Content
Interviews
Gig guides
Album reviews
New bands
Advertisements for new instruments
Stories of bands adventures
Top 20 songs of the Month
Feedback
Funny pictures of rock artist of the month
Letter from the editor
hottest band at the moment

Feature Content
Interview with a specific band
top 10 rock songs of all time
New album of a band
Greatest Album of all time
featured Gig of the month
A life in the month of David  Grohl
Foo Fighters interview
Exclusive interview with Dave Short lead guitarist in Eye rock
Interview with the worlds greatest rock band gamer
Why fallout boy really broke up!
On the road with Green Day
How slash nearly died on stage
New kid on the block-take a look at the great Liverpool busker
Kings of Leon album review
My chemical romance tour
And interview with a band each month about what their greatest gig is?
House styleCover lines:
Cooper BlackHeadlines: Blackcloak Std boldStandfirst: Arno pro Smbd caption bold (14 font)
Captions: Arno pro Smbd Caption (size 8 font)
Features first paragraph: drop capital Arno pro Smbd caption, 5 lines deep and the First word in capitals.News first paragraph: first two words in bold capitals
Body text:
Berlin Sans FBColour
scheme: Red, black and Blue

Wednesday, 3 November 2010

Questionnaire results

In our media lesson today we made questionnaires on our music magazines to see what people liked about them and what makes them read the magazines. We asked a total of 20 people and tallied the results. here is my results in the power point below.

Questionnaire results

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Sunday, 31 October 2010

Annotated contents page

Recently in our media lesson we annotated the contents page of music magazines. To do this we used word to annotate them then used a website called Prezzi to upload it. Here is my work
http://prezi.com/ghedkdy89-b8/analysing-contents-pages/

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Annotations of music magazines


In our media lesson today we were annotating the front covers of music magazines and see how they follow the codes and conventions.

Initial Plans for my magazine

After doing my research on music magazines my plans for my magazine are as followed
  • Price: £2.30
  • Frequency of publication: once a month
  • Average issue size: 176 pages
  • regular content: upcoming gigs, top of the charts
  • featured articles: Interviews

Tuesday, 12 October 2010

Codes and conventions of a double page spread

In our media lesson today we looked at double page spreads of a music magazine here is what we found;
Main image which takes up a whole page and sometimes goes across the page this is called "Bleeding"
Page number along with the name of the magazine and a website
Magazine name
Issue date
Drop cap
Main title
Theme
Size 11 font
Lots of writing
The artists of the band are usually on the left side page
A consistent theme
It is written in an informal way
Stand first-usually above the article
Bylines
3-4 columns
Drop quotes

Monday, 11 October 2010

Researching the market place

Price: £2.20
Frequency of publication: once a week
issue size: about 63
Regular content: upcoming artists and events
Feature articles: interveiws with artists

Postioning statement: New Musical Express




Price: £2.30
Frequency of publication: once a week
issue size: 66
regular content: interveiws with artists
feature articles: upcoming artists, reviews, competition and bonus features
http://www.nme.com/
postioning statement: LIFE IS LOUD

Initail Ideas

For my main task the genre i am going to choose is indie/rock. This is because i like to listen to this type of genre. The target audience i am going to choose is the ages between 13-20+.

Sunday, 10 October 2010

Evaluation

My magazine uses the forms of codes and conventions of a real life magazine because the front cover has:
cover lines down the sides,  3-4 simple colours such as mine are blue, black and yellow, the masthead makes the genre very clear. It also has featured articles advertised on the front cover such as school trips. The main cover line is a bigger font than all the others to make it stand out as the main story. It also includes a website and issue date and a main image. However my magazine also challenges the codes and conventions because it does not include a bar code.

I have already used photo shop to make previous magazines back at GCSE level, but i developed new key skills during the production of my front cover. Also i used a new format called Quark which i have never used before. I used this to design my contents page. I learned new skills on this such as how to re size the picture to fit into the box and to put a shadow drop on the boxes which hold the numbers of the page in. I found Quark easier to use than photo shop because all the tools were really simple to follow and there are guidelines to stick to so everything comes out neater.

The strengths and weaknesses of my product vary. Some strong points of my product are; the title, i especially like the title because it makes the genre very clear and the font it is used in is cursive which is what most school students are taught to write in. Another strong point about my magazine is The contents page structure. I think it looks very professional and the theme of black and yellow makes it easier to stand out what page you are looking for. However a weakness about my finished product is the main image of my front cover. The colour writing to go over the background was very difficult to choose as the background its self was different colours. Another weakness about my product is some of the photo's were a bit rushed and i think if i had more time i would of got a better quality of photo's. A weakness of the new media technologies i used is on photo shop the magnetic tool is very difficult to use. A strength would have to be how easy it is to make something look professional on Quark because of how easy it is set out.

My Magazine


This is the complete version of my project for a school magazine

My Contents page



To design my contents page I used Quark. Here is what i did in the lesson.

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

Quark demonstration

In our media lesson today, we were shown how to use Quark. Quark is like photo shop only a bit more sophisticated there are rough guidelines of where you work needs to be and there are less tools to use. We are using Quark to design our contents page for our school magazine. In the demonstration we were taught how to import a picture and scale it to size and move it to where we want it, then we were taught how to import the text for out title and change the colour and font, we were also taught how to carry on the text into the other column which was quite clever using the linking tool. Here is the work i did in lesson on Quark.

Sunday, 3 October 2010

front cover on photoshop






In our media lesson we were given cameras' and sent off to take some pictures for our school magazine the first 4 pictures above are the ones i took and i am going to use in my school magazine.
Next we had to upload the photos onto the computers and start making our front cover.
as you can see the last 2 pictures are screen grabs of my work. I cut around the person in my photo using the magnetic lasso on photoshop the last picture is what i have so far.

Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Preliminary Exercise




Our task for the preliminary exercise was to plan our front cover and to make a rough draft of what it will look like.
on my front cover its going to have:
magazine name: S-cool
colour theme: blue, black, sliver
mis-en-scene: GCSE results
cover lines: GCSE results, A-level results, school productions etc.
The second part of the exercise was to plan our contents page and make a rough draft of what that will look like.
On my Contents page it is going to have:
images which relate to the articles and featured articles such as charity news.

Camera shots

In our media lesson we were given a sheet with different types of camera shots, our task was to name the shots and write was was included in that shot e.g extreme close up : eyes and nose.
We were then given a camera and a task sheet. The task was to take specific shots and some to convey friendship and stress.

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

Codes and Conventions of a music magazines contents page

Today in our media lesson we were given 7 contents pages and then we were asked to list the codes and conventions of the page such as;
The colour theme carries on throughout the magazine
main image corresponds with the cover story
featured articles
website
letter from the editor about whats in the magazine
deals for subscriptions
date
page numbers
captions on the main image
buzz words
page number colours are different to the text or are in bold to make it stand out
the word "Contents" is bigger than the other texts
little images link to other stories
there are about 20 featured articles
size 11 font is consistent
most important things are at the top of the magazine such as the main feature, where as the least important things are at the bottom like page number
it welcomes new readers with a letter from the editor
contact details
Information about the magazine- address, phone number, name of editor
in the list of contents the page number always comes before the text followed by a few words e.g the artists name to intrigue the reader in either bold or capitals the average font is 12-13
A sub-line after this, this tells you a more specific detail about the article in a smaller and roman font (no bigger than size 11)

Tuesday, 21 September 2010

Codes and Conventions of a Front Cover magazine

Yesterday and today in media we were handed five magazine front covers and we were asked to look at the layout and list the codes and conventions of the magazine such as;

The magazine mast head takes up the width of the page at the top and it is set in its own unique font.
Main image takes up most of the page and the images are in a direct mode of address.
The bar code is usually located on the bottom or the side of the page which also includes the issue date the website and the price.
There is usually a theme of colours used on a magazine front cover no more than 3-4 colours which are simple and do not clash but are also eye catching.
featured articles
background makes the main image stand out and makes it look more formal to the readers.
Text anchors the image it is never over the image.
4-6 cover lines on each front cover
Main cover line is usually in a bigger font than the others to make it stand out.
Buzz words are used in order to attract for example "plus" and "free", these words both get the reader to want to buy that magazine.
Subsidairy images images at used which may also get you to look at the magazine, especially when well known images are used these images may be used as a back upimage.
only a few fonts are used either serif (with hooks) e.g Times roman or sans (without hooks)e.g Arial