Lainey getting ready to shoot the scenes:

With this I am now about done 70% done with the footage I need.  Also yesterday I also took Laineys picture for what’s going to be on my magazine cover.

My unedited magazine cover:

I am currently in the middle of organising my next shoot with a few friends.

I already posted the photo I took during yesterdays filming that I decided to use as the main image for my poster:

I took it into Photoshop and first played around with the lighting which greatly increased the detail you could see in the mask and Toms arm. I then began to ask the conventional movie poster factors such as the title, credits along the bottom and a website:

Here is the final product:

I decided to go with the title “Devils Asylum” as the villains are all psychopathic monsters and devils is a good way to describe them and the fields in which they live is like their asylum.

The film is about a Detective named Miller, played by my friend Lainey, looking for her lost friend in an area in the countryside that is notorious for people going missing and being the origin of urban legends. The countryside is filled with psychopathic, murdering, cannibals, not unlike The Hills have Eyes, that begin to come after Detective Miller.

I had help filming it with my two friends Tom and Lainey who were a great help and amazing to work with. In the one day we managed to film nearly every scene I needed without the use of heavy make up and it being night-time. The reason we didn’t shoot those other scenes is that Lainey felt she got more of a clearer picture of what I wanted to film and insisted of bringing a larger selection of clothes to look better for the part. As me and Tom were also free today we agreed to postpone filming the other shots till later today if it meant having them be more authentic.

Yesterday we managed to achieve filming all the scenes that did not require Lainey or Tom to be in heavy makeup which will take up around 2/3 of the trailer. One scene we did film however involved Tom dressing his hand in bandages and make up while looking at Lainey from a distance. With his hand in that state I also decided it would be a good image to have as the poster.

Tom having the make up applied to his hand by Lainey:

The unedited photo I took that will be made into the poster for my movie:

Some of the scenes were shot at my house but only briefly as I felt the location was too urban for what I had in mind. We only shot one scene of Lainey and Tom at my front door and another of Lainey at the window with a mystery man in the garden, that shot however may not be used as it was unclear.

The other scenes we shot were in a field near my house and the entrance to a quarry site in Arborfield.

Lainey and me in the field near my house getting ready to shoot a scene:

Lainey and Tom in front of my mums car just beyond the entrance to the quarry. I decided to use my mums car for the day as it seemed a more realistic vehicle for a Detective to have:

After we were done filming the shots we went back to my house and spoke directly into the cameras microphone for a few voice overs that will be placed in the trailer. Tonight we will film the remaining scenes which will be mostly all the horror shots.

I feel that I managed to keep the theme of the magazine consistent throughout the three (four if you count the article as a two) pages. All have a rather dark, gritty kind of look to them and use dark colours as dark colours are a common convention amongst metal magazines. The front cover and contents both have metal backgrounds that goes well with the theme and also give an obvious meaning that the magazine about metal music. On the front cover and contents page I also used the ace of spades around some of the text as the ace of spades is an iconic rock symbol made famous by Motorhead. Both times I used the title of the magazine in an emphasized manner I had them put in the same font.

I used a limited number of fonts, only around four in total as this is also a common convention amongst magazines. I used four different colours for the fonts (red, white, black, yellow) and used them where they looked best or where the colours needed to be a certain kind to be read clearly. I made a steel frame border for the images in the contents page to keep up with the metal theme (both style and music style). The article has been made in a different style from the cover and contents as the band that the article is about aren’t stereotypically heavy death metal like the cover and contents have been designed to be.

Instead of having a metal material theme like the cover and contents page, the article has a kind of scrap book theme to it with a piece of crumbled paper as the background and the images made to look like Polaroids scattered around to make it look they have been placed there by hand. It has this theme as a more heavy metal theme wouldn’t have matched the pictures very well as the band in the photos looks more classic rock.

There is a fair amount of text on all three pages with either brief explanations that are relevant to the images they are placed next to or there are quotes on the images themselves from people in the image, this is a very common convention amongst magazines. Obviously the article has the most amount of text in it, the red text was quotes from the band members and the black was the actual article being written. The article was reporting on how the bands tour was going so far and any interesting things that were worth mentioning along the way, the article was concluded with the ace of spades that has been used several other times. Also in the bottom right hand corner of the page is the name of the band and their new album they’re touring to promote.

The magazine has a good consistent quality and theme to it, the whole thing has a gritty, underground feel to it which works rather well given its target audience.

My magazine represents a rather select target audience, age is around mid teens to as far as late fifties depending on the readers taste in music. Social class is around working to middle and even higher, the dominant ethnicity in these magazines are usually white people, any region can like the music.

Any media institution can distribute my magazine, such as WHSmiths, petrol stations, supermarkets etc. The best company to help produce the magazine would be “Future” as they make all the best alternative music magazines and all the magazines I have studied (excluding NME…which is always terrible…always).

I attracted my audience by using the age old tradition of metal magazines of dark colours, having the music taste made clear from the symbols of hard rock like barbed wire, metal/ industrial backgrounds, tattooed people etc.

I have learnt from the whole process that Photoshop really is the best designing programme available and would not use any other.

I would say building my college magazine was much more difficult than my music magazine as I was much more restricted with what I was asked to do. Plus Making a music magazine with the music genre of my choice made things much more interesting in that I could add a very personal touch to it and that made it a lot more interesting. Being asked to make a college magazine was not my idea of an interesting project.

I wanted a different picture on the cover this time round so I chose one I had from when me and few friends went to concert in Vienna. We both look quite heavy metal-ish so the picture worked, only problem was were too far apart so I had to cut us each out into separate layers and brought us closer together. Also, after doing this a portion of my leg and shoe was missing so I had to place us so you could see down a certain point of our bodies.

For a background I wanted something that looked industrial and also keeping with the metal theme. I found a good metal girder type thing but it didn’t look very good as single object so instead I duplicated it and placed two side by side. After some minor resizing I thought this made a good background.

Something else I needed to do was make a holder for one of the stories that was going to be advertised on the cover. I found a barbed wire circle that worked perfectly. I simply filled the centre with red and placed the font over it.

After adding a few final touches to the cover I decided to add one more thing that I noticed a lot of magazines are doing this time of year and decided to ad a banner promoting the give away of a free calendar. I used a simple black rectangle as the backdrop, then added some barbed wire lines across it to give it some good presentation. I found one good example of barbed wire and copied it several times to complete the link.

For my contents page I did the same thing as with my front cover, I copied the headings and sent them over aswell as putting a copy of the front cover at the top of the page. I found an appropriate background to use aswell.

One criticism I had from the when I did the last contents page was that there was not border between each other articles pictures. I decided to make a frame to fit around all the images. To do this I used the same girder I used for the front covers background and stretched parts of it, and carved certain pieces out and copied them to make a steel frame for the photos.

I also liked the picture of Martin at the top of the article pictures on my old contents page so I decided to remake it, luckily I have several pictures of him head on making stupid faces.

The article was the actually the easiest part to make despite being the largest. All I needed to do was have the page as a photo, the other a crumbled up paper background then simply add the text and place the photos around to look like Polaroids spread out on a scrap-book.

Slight problem with my cover apparently. I’ve just been informed that the censorship Nazis wouldn’t allow any smoking to be in our work so they certainly wouldn’t allow me to have someone expressing themselves on my front cover with a hand gesture. So, problem very lamely solved….

After that was all sorted we just went along and started photographing each other in normal poses as they shoot was meant to look like the band chilling out at a bar before they went on stage. I didn’t need anyone to dress up, just wear clothing that wasn’t too strongly affiliated with a music type other than metal.

I wanted the shots to look realistic so they were just taken with a normal digital camera and the lighting was whatever was there at the time. The whole task was quite enjoyable, I didn’t need to direct people around very much as just say “just do what you would if you were chilling with your bandmates” and then after we were done we had a relaxing pint.

I researched several magazines of the same or similar music type and came up with many conventions:

• 

  Nearly every music magazine I found had one band on the cover as the focus. However several had a montage of band names mixed together designed over an image. This was usually when multiple bands were releasing an album around the same time or when a festival or tour was taking place.

• A lot of the magazines seemed to have the title behind the main image and in some cases it was almost completely covered. However there is usually enough the title remaining in sight so the reader can recognise the title logo.
• A common trait of some of the magazines is that the background of the cover image is completely blank as not to distract the reader from the artist.
• There are several other bands mentioned on the covers. Usually placed at the top of the page.
• The price is usually placed close to, or with, the bar code.
• Most covers have the bar codes on the front.
• All the covers have the issue month on them somewhere.
• The issue number of the magazine is usually placed by the bar code.
• The artist/s on the cover are always starring straight back at the reader.
• Usually there is a small sentence around the bands advertised to describe what the review is about.

The magazines target their audience by putting recognisable people on the covers that their target audience would be interested in and keep their attention by having more articles on other bands that are similar to the ones portrayed on the cover.

I looked at a couple of online rock magazines (Split-magazine.com and Blistering.com) and looked at the differences between them and the magazine I have here with me. Essentially they’re the same except with less adverts and it’s a lick to get where you want rather than flip. One think I wasn’t too keen on was the that in most of the articles the related pictures where on a separate part of the website under the gallery section, and under further inspection the online magazines are not nearly as well put together or interesting as the actual magazines. A good explanation why I myself and everyone else I’ve asked has never heard of either of them.  Neither of them even have forums or a message board and oddly enough not even a comment box anywhere.

I did some audience research by making a short questionnaire asking questions that were more relevant to what you’d expect to see in a music magazine. Here is the questionnaire and the results of the twelve people I handed them out to:

Gender:                   Male = 5       Female = 7

Age:     Under 16 = 0   16-18 = 7     19-21 = 4     22-25 = 0          26+ = 1    

What is your favourite type of rock music? (Circle, more than one if appropriate)

Metal = 6     Soft = 4     Classic = 7     Heavy = 4     Punk = 7     Industrial = 2     Goth = 0

Do you usually buy rock music magazines:     Yes = 5     No = 7

Do you use the magazines to see what concerts/gigs are coming up?     Yes = 3     No = 9

What would you like to see more in a magazine?

Articles on bands = 4     Articles on albums = 5     Pictures = 2    

Ads for events = 5     Free giveaways with the magazine = 6

How much are you willing to pay for a music magazine?

Under £1 = 0     £1-2 = 5     £3-4 = 7     £5+ = 0

 I have learnt from my audience research that:

• People enjoy freebies with the magazines.
• They are willing to pay around £3-4.
• Magazines are used commonly as a source for information on upcoming gigs/events.
• Peoples taste in bands usually changes regularly.

“What generic conventions are there in NME?” First of all I find it rather funny that the first thing I think of when I read the word “generic” was infact, NME. Well the basic conventions are the same as all music magazines really.

The front cover has a different band on it every month with additional information surrounding them. From looking at NME covers over the past few years I think they’ve gone in a slightly different direction and just had the same prepubescent, massive fringed, cardigan wearing little boys on the cover every time. But hey, That’s cool these days right?….right?

Other conventions are that there are very few different colours and fonts on the front cover, usualy a maximum of three on each cover. There are several adverts for new albums and films throughout the magazine just like others. I found it rather ponsey however that most of the ones in NME were for designer clothing and cologne where as in other music magazines they were for things like musical equipment.

The audiences loyalty is maintained in many ways, be it quality of articles, most interesting and latest music news, exclusive stories and dates of events such as tours and concerts, free give aways etc. But I always felt the best was simply the quality of the article and the biggest part about making it a good article was the band that it was about. Once again, unfortunately for NME, the majority of bands they cover are talentless little kids that spend more time on their appearance than they do writing music, getting better with instruments, really thinking about who their music appeals to, etc.

Stereotypes really are the foundation of any music related media, one that NME took a bit too far by mistaking the word ”stereotypes” with “clones”. If you’re a punk you stereotypically like bands such as the Sex Pistols, Towers of London, The Ramones, etc. If you’re a metal head you stereotypically like bands like Metallica, Slipknot, Machine head, etc. If you’re an Indie kid then no one cares what you like because it’s all identical white noise, as proven by NME. But the point is that these stereoptypes are used to promote new bands in the right place. Like if a new pop-rock band emerged they wouldn’t be covered in a rap/hip-hop magazine, such as the same way that if any band that was actualy any good was formed, it wouldn’t be featured in NME.

Stereotyping is also used to help place the correct adverts in magazines, as I said earlier, NME has a lot of ponsey adverts with designer clothing and cologne which is a direct appeal to its target audience.

If I didn’t make it clear in the title, introduction or basicaly throughout the whole post that my research into NME will have no effect whatsoever on my magazine then clearly I havn’t spent enough time making it how obvious I positively hate Indie/scene music. But nevertheless I’ll spell it out. Aside from looking at the raw basic comventions, such as having the title of the magazine on the fron cover and the magazine made from paper this research will not inform how I make my music magazine in any way whatsoever.

The photos I took worked very well, as does the way I layed then out across the contents page. The artificial background I mentioned earlier for the cover was then used several times again, fused together to make a different background for the contents page that manage to keep a constant theme between the cover and contents page. I still feel however that the backdrop doesn’t quite fit very well for the cover page.

The other students think my cover and contents page looks very good all in all. Two students also agreed that the backdrop I had chosen for cover didn’t work very well.

This whole process has taught me to try and get the criteria of the work as early as possible if for whatever reason it was not given to you immediatley from the start.

For my music magazine I will be experimenting more with fake backdrops in an effort to not repeat the awkward coupling of artificial backgrounds and real photographs.

I will be using MANY techniques I did not get use when creating this college magazine as necessity did not dictate me to use them. Of course I will be using the simple and basic techniques used such as croping, moving and resizing images.

Feedback was good, but most of it was from people that i’d been helping to use photoshop for the first time so personaly, though I am glad they liked it, I didn’t feel they’re feedback was up to the same standards as mine. Or maybe they were and they were just being nice and actualy agree with my thoughts, I don’t know.

I think the picture of the student I had on the cover worked well, however the makeshift background I used didn’t really compliment the whole cover very well.

From doing this I have learnt to take more time to experiment and be more creative when using articificial backdrops and real photos together. This is what I will be doing for my music magazine.

I found inDesign completely irrelevant when compared to Photoshop. Photoshop is the quintessential designing programme and asking us to use such a gimick of a designing programme such as inDesign is a form of torture.

There was nothing you could do in inDesign that you couldn’t in photoshop if you knew how. It’s a poorly designed and user unfriendly programme that I will never be using again when photoshop is an option.