Genre

The Genre of music of my music magazine is Indie Rock, I chose this because it is one of my favourite genres of music.  I know a lot of information about the genre so I thought this would be the most appropriate genre to do my magazine on.  I know a lot of artists within the genre so me picking Indie Rock would allow me to make sure that my research was better because I already had some valuable information about the genre.  I believe that Indie Rock was the perfect genre for me to do and to base my magazine on, because I feel the most confident doing it on this genre because of the enjoyment and the background information about the magazine. 

Connecting with my target audience

I connected with my target audience by firstly finding out who my target audience was and then making sure my magazine was appropriate.  I made sure that my pictures, text and information within my magazine where appropriate to my target audience.  I think that I have connected with my target audience because of the research I have found out.  The research I have conducted I believe has helped connect with my target audience in my magazine.  My research are magazines such as: NME< Q magazine. 

Double Page Spread V2

Mise En Scene

The Mise en Scene I thought it was hard to decide where to choose my photoshoot.  Finally I decided to base the pictures in Liverpool, this is because we are based in Liverpool and their are a lot of features I can use within the city centre.  Another reason I shot it in Liverpool is because Liverpool has a great musical background bands such as: The Beatles... It also has very famous places and bars such as: The Cavern Club where The Beatles had their first gig.  The city also has famous roads such as Penny lane.  Because of these reasons I thought that this was a great place to shoot my photos.  I took a picture of Sam Shaw on a backstreet alley playing the harmonica to show the sign of rebellion again.  I took a picture of my two artists outside The Cavern Club with the statue of John Lennon.  I took a picture of Sam Shaw in the music shop Dawsons playing a guitar.  The pictures I took I believed they were perfect for my Genre and the theme of my magazine. 

My Artists Costume

Another character that I chose was Alex Brandwood.  His costume was slightly different to Sam's costume.  The costume I chose for him wasn't as dark as Sams he had colour.  He had a maroon jumper on to show personality and he had a grey coat.  The Grey coat symbolises the dark theme that is still there (Sam's costume) however the maroon jumper shows that he wasn't all dark and independent.  My research showed me that their is also some colourful Indie artists, this gave me the idea to have one artist a little but colourful and the other character dark.  This is so I could express the two types of Indie Artists.

My Characters Costume

One of The Characters I have chosen is Sam Shaw. I have chosen there costumes to fit the theme of my magazine.  I have chosen Sam to wear Black  to symbolise being rebellious.  This is a theme for my Genre of Music.  A similar character I have related to is Arctic Monkeys lead singer Alex Turner.  Throughout my research it shows that he mostly wears Black, I tried to copy this theme of costume.  Indie artists keep themselves to themselves because they are independent.  This means they do not want to draw attention to themselves by wearing colourful clothes.  This is why I dressed Sam all in Black to try and stick to one of the stereotypes of Indie artists. 

Q5. My Products Challenges

My magazine has the same features as a real music magazine; the one I chose to imitate is NME.  This is because I believe that NME is the same genre of music as mine so it would be easy to get my research from them.  I researched NME a lot and got a lot of good ideas which I could use to make my magazine as professional as possible.  NME have the same type of bands as me because the two magazine have the same genre which is Indie Rock.  This makes it a lot easier for me because I could take some ideas from NME for photo shoot ideas and mix some ideas of my own so that my magazine would look realistic.  Also the design of NME is very helpful because normally use the same layout but just have different features and content with the front cover.  I would be able to take some ideas from the layout and put it on mine to make mine look like a professional music magazine.

So my magazine is similar to NME because in the front cover I have chosen a picture to fill the whole page and have features & content around the sides to draw the viewers’ attention.  NME normally fill the whole page with a picture, this maybe a close up of a single person or have a group shot of people such as a band.  So in relation to NME I have chosen a single person close up to show the expression and show the musical instrument I artist has.  Even though I took some ideas from NME, it would only be the basic skeleton of my music magazine as I would have to take a range of pictures to see what looks best.  I would also have to place the content around the sides so that it would look professional and realistic.

There is a lot of differences between my magazine and NME.  One differences would be the font, the font of my magazine and NMEs are different.  This is because I had to choose a font that looked suitable for my front cover.  Another difference is the information, I have taken some of the layout techniques from NME but they look different because I have inputted some of my own layout techniques so that my magazine has a unique point about it.  Overall I have taken some ideas off NME, only to make my magazine look as professional as possible.  However I have also inputted my own features to make mine look unique.  I am happy with my magazine on how it has turned out, with the ideas from NME and my own ideas.