Media Industry Techniques

Location Scouting

I now have an idea of the kind of look I want for my magazine front cover. I need to decide on a location as it may need a lot of planning to sort out. I also need to make sure the location and time is available to my friends who will be modelling for my front cover so this is essential that I sort this out as soon as possible.

 I would most like to be able to take my shoot in the college photography studio as it looks professional and gives a great quality photo. The weather at an outside location may be terrible on the day I want to take the photos. I also know how to take good photos and how to use all the lighting equipment with taking AS photography too so it would be a good decision to choose this. Most front cover images are taken in a studio anyway so I want to try and replicate magazines such as Kerrang! as much as possible and I think this would make it look really good.
I want to take some photos outside too as my images will all look completely different and variation looks better. These are the locations I want to use:

• The college photography studio.
• In Barnes Park.
• Behind the college.
• Sunniside in the town.

I have also went out and took a picture of all my locations so you can see how the background of my images will look. I have chosen these locations as when I went to all of them they were fairly quiet so nobody would be around for my photos and crowds of people wouldn't get in the way. I also had the idea of going to Mowbray Park and the steps outside the Civic Center but both of these locations are very busy all day so they wouldn't be very good ideas so this is why I chose the quieter locations. Here are some of the locations I will be going to if the weather is suitable, I have found got these images by using google maps:

Preliminary Task Contents Page Flat Plan

Preliminary Task Front Cover Flat Plan

More Front Cover Ideas

After researching magazine ideas, I then looked further into some ideas involving my genre of rock. I found a lot of examples of rock bands but struggled to find a solo artist who wasn't associated with only pop and more girly magazines. I then noticed that the lead singer of The Pretty Reckless, Taylor Momsen, has appeared on the cover of various music magazines in the past such as Q and Rolling Stone. 

The poses and clothes she has are very rock themed and would fit with my magazine very well and if I did decide to make my front cover a solo artist this research and images have gave me a lot of inspiration and helped me a lot. They look like very sexual images so are a form of male gaze, they are created to look very seductive to attract males to it so encourages them to look at and buy the magazine.

Magazine Front Cover Ideas

I need to start thinking of ideas for my music magazine and this includes looking at poses and background ideas.
To get some ideas for posture ideas I looked at similar music magazine covers with both a girl (Lana Del Rey) and a band with men (Biffy Clyro) on the cover so I could look at different options I have depending on whether my cover model is male or female and if they are in a band or are a solo artist.

I know I want my front cover photo to look quite casual because if the main image stands out too much it will draw all the attention away from the main sell line and the other sell-lines.
Also I've noticed and as you can see on these images I have found the cover models usually wear black or white as the main image covers most the background and bright font contrasts really well with those colours.

I still haven't decided if I want just one person on the front of my magazine or whether a band would look better. For the mise-en-scene I want it to be quite basic but look good so I want this to be in a photography studio, I will use one of the college photography studios to take this photo in. I need to choose a day that my friends, who are modelling will all be available and this may be difficult to organise and I need to make sure to plan it in advance so I know one of college studios is available at that date and time.

For the background, most of the magazines such as Kerrang! and NME have plain backgrounds as you can't see them that much anyway but for my magazine I still want quite a basic background too. I am thinking of having either a wall or a fence behind them. I could also try and take it in a photography studio at college to make it look more professional too. Another reason I think it will be more suitable doing the shoot inside, in a studio is that if it was outside I would need dry or sunny weather and this might cause a delay in taking the photos.

Preliminary Task Feedback

We collected some feedback on our magazine by the rest of our media class, this really helped me to know what worked with this cover and what could be improved. Everyone really liked our main image, they said the mode of address was direct which works really well so draws the reader in. The masthead also got a lot of really positive results as people said it was really bold and stood out well. Most people really liked the puff too, they liked the position and the colours used. 

Although we did forget to put a price on it and this would be essential to have one. Some areas of the blue text is also really hard to read so we could of used a darker colour or positioned it better. A lot of people said we should include a secondary image too but we did think about doing this but decided not too as the main image looked much better alone, if a secondary image was added; it would have drew attention away from the main image, which we didn't want. We had mixed feedback on the font style, some people liked it and some people said it looked a bit unprofessional. Next time I will try and use a different font style as it didn't appeal to everyone.

This feedback has gave me a lot of ideas and ways in improving my music magazine so it will look better and more professional.