Enrolement Task

While enroling to Woking College's media course, we were given a number of tasks, which basically got us to draft ideas for our music magazine and then we had to write an essay on our favourite magazine or artist/band.

A) Potential Mastheads?

RAWR! ?
Youth ?
Next Gen Music?

B) Target Audience?

Late teenage (15-19) male audience
Drum and Bass, Rock, Indie

C) Potential Features?

Big section of unsigned bands
Every week magazine
Each week a4 sized posters, 4 or 6 posters each week
Opportunity for the public to vote each for the big poster which will be in released with the next magazine at the beginning/end of the month
Set up a myspace page where the public can suggest an unsigned band which will then be interviewed and added into an issue
“We recommend” page
Each issue has an interview with famous bands ranging between Pendulum to Arctic Monkeys, Paramore to Papa Roach.
Advertisement page
Up and coming gigs
Gig reviews

D)Essay on my favourite band/magazine.

My chosen band is Papa Roach. One of the reasons why Papa Roach are one of my favourite bands is that they have a great image, in every photo or video I have seen of the band, they always have their own unique style, dark but powerful and they would most definitely stand out in a crowd, as a teenager, this rebellious image inspires me to dress in a similar manor to feel as powerful. However the bands lyrics pick up on many important issues, one of which is individualism, so despite the bands physical image they encourage their listeners to keep their individualism.

The bands lyrics cover a large number of issues including: poverty, politics, self harm, and much more. The bands success in all their lyrics come from their first hand experience in near enough all of the issues, this shows listeners that this band is the real deal, they don't just sing about these events, they have in fact, lived through them. The lyrics are very empowering despite, in most songs, being about desperation. Listening to the Papa Roach albums really gets me to think more about the world as the band raise issues that, normally, I would not think about and this then gets me to broaden my opinion on the world, as songs like “Getting Away with Murder” highlight the American governments bias view and how, as long as you are in this government you can do anything, listening to this song then got me to think about politics more. Whereas songs like “Lifeline” and “Last Resort” highlight an idea of desperation in the teenage lifestyle, the songs reach out to teenagers while they are in a state of mind where they want help, as they sing about a need for a “Lifeline” to save them from the state they are in.
Each of the Papa Roach albums focuses on a different type of genre with each one highlighting a key topic of issues, for example the album “Infest” is about poverty and a broken home, whereas the album “The Paramore Sessions” focuses on love and fighting for yourself.

The songs on the “Infest” album were written by lead singer of the band, Jacoby Shaddix. He is an inspiration to me as a musician and song writer, as his parents divorced when he was 6 and he had to bare through the arguments between his parents, he also is a sufferer of ADHD, but despite this he still managed a successful music career and ended up marrying his high school sweet heart. Jacoby has suffered from a drug and alcohol addiction, which he managed to kick one year ago. It is also rumoured that during his teenage years and the years of his addiction Jacoby self harmed, which he also recently got over.

Along with the meaningful issues in the bands songs, they're also my favourite band due to their catchy lyrics, guitar riffs and drum beats.

Practise Cover and Contents Page

Before starting on our main magazine cover, Sophie set us the task of taking images and using photoshop to create ourselves a mock "Zine" cover and contents page. This would then highlight the areas on photoshop that we are weak and also where we are strong.

This is an image of Willem Defoe that I used as a practise image on photoshop, the aim was not to make a good image but to play around with photoshop and get used to the tools, as you can see i added alot of zips to his face, i used the clone tool alot because i liked the effect of it and i think that if i could incorporate this tool into my main magazine it would look good.

This is my practise "Zine" cover

It is very basic, this is because i was so far into the editting process, that photoshop would not let me edit the whole image and add in a background, however i feel the cover is not too boring.

I used the image of my friend as he has a nice cheeky smile that is very inviting, this fits in with the theme i wanted for the magazine, the theme of "welcome"

However my friend is no "posterboy" so i decided to edit the image using the blur tool, this would then keep his face the same colour but get rid of his freckles and spots.

To make my image not so rough around the edges i used the airbrush tools at different sizes to blend the image to the background.

To make the image more crisp i played around with colour levels etc.

I then moved on to my contents page, unfortunately i didn't take many of my own images so i borrowed some off a friend, this image was one of them, i chose it as the "Zine" magazine is aimed at Woking students and this is a shot of the skate park not far from the college.

To change the image i decided to make it black and white, this would also blend the colours of the background and not leave any contrasting colours.

However when loading the image onto another photoshop, the black and white effect wasn't loaded so i changed to the charcoal effect which gives a similar image.

I used the gold writing to stand out from the black and white making the page easier to read.

When making my final cover and contents i will aim towards making conventions for my magazine and sticking to those themes throughout, i might stick to a single image on the front cover as this makes it simple but the image needs to be good and filling. I will also work better on a background for the front cover, as a single colour does not look that good, and i will also work better on making the contents page look more professional.