Guide to labelling your posts - and easing the moderator's navigation!

In order to ensure your blog is as easy to navigate as possible and it is easy to find your finished construction task, please ensure each post is clearly labelled with one of the following headings:
- Research and planning
- Construction
- Evaluation
- Link to school magazine blog

This also means that those of you who are hoarding lots (I hope!) of work because you are worried about it being uploaded in the wrong order need not worry too much - the labelling process will ensure that we mark your work in the correct order.

Follow this step-by-step guide to ensure that your posts are easy to locate and that you start off on the right foot with the moderator! Click on each screen grab to see an enlarged version. The label headings will be slightly different as the screen grabs were produced for Year 13. Please refer to the headings above.

Evaluation

You should be finishing your construction now and getting ready to start putting together your evaluation, if you haven't already done so.

If you have taken our advice, you will have collated lots of material for your evaluation during the production process, so you should just need to assemble this together.

Your evaluation MUST answer the following questions in detail and be presented in an original and creative way - not just typed up in sentences:

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Check out this section of Pete Fraser's blog for some inspiration as to how you may present your evaluation:
http://petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/evaluation-for-ocr-coursework.html

Or open up this Powerpoint presentation which offers helpful suggestions as to how you might approach each question in a user-friendly format.

Good luck - and don't forget the final deadline is midnight on Friday 8th February!

Are you on track to meet the final deadline?

Remember, the final deadline is 8th February.

I am very concerned that some of you have still not, for example:

• Uploaded photos from your photo shoots (not just the one photo you have selected for your cover) - remember, more than one photo shoot is needed to achieve Level 4. You must include more than one artist and an appropriate variety of mise en scene.
• Uploaded details of any planning/layouts/drafts for your front cover, contents page or double page spread.
• Made any reference to your contents page or DPS anywhere on your blog - these are essential parts of your magazine and are assessed in the same way as the front cover.

Please make it your priority to get up to date with your coursework as a matter of urgency. In order to submit a Level 4 Evaluation (worth 20% of your coursework mark), you need to allow yourself a week to put this together.  More details to follow on the Evaluation this week.

Remember, marks are awarded (and deducted) according to your time management skills in your mark for 'Research and Planning' (another 20% of your coursework mark).

Reminder for Miss Osborne's class - Mon 10th and Mon 18th

As discussed, by now you should have all of the theory and information you need to proceed with planning and producing your music magazine so you should spend our Monday lessons in a computer room working on this.
There are no rooms available for us to use as a class, so please work in one of the following rooms, assuming they are not fully-booked: S2, S13 (some PCs available sharing with Ms. James's Year 11s), M15 or M16 - or the sixth form study area.
I will be based in S12 as usual should you have any queries; please report to me in there at some point during the day so I can mark you present. And of course, don't forget I'll be accessing your blogs to check on the progress you are making!
Tuesdays - Please continue with your coursework as usual.
Thursdays - Our lessons will take place as usual in S13.

Remember that after Christmas, all lessons will be spent preparing for the exam, so you must make excellent use of the remaining lesson time you have!

Good luck.

Blogs of the week!

Congratulations - some of you are working really hard and your blogs are not only looking professional, but they are also really detailed.

We will post links to blogs of the week here to celebrate your work (smiley faces are on their way to you!) and share it with the rest of the class so that they can learn from the excellent examples you are setting!

Week starting 26th November
http://kimmusicmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/


Week starting 3rd December
http://catnealasmusicmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/


Week starting 14th January
http://catnealasmusicmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/

Week starting 21st January

Flat planning and pagination

Before you start finalising the design of your contents page, you need to have decided:
a) How many pages your magazine will have (Think about: price, frequency of publication, existing media etc.)
b) The types of contents your magazine will include (Think about: audience research findings, existing media)
b) The pagination of your magazine - the order in which you'll arrange your pages and why

What is a flat plan?

Link to a blank flat plan

Planning your magazine cover - linking your design to your brand

Once you have established a clear idea of your magazine's brand identity, how it fits in with existing media and how you plan to attract your target audience, you are ready to start planning.
Refer to this lesson and your analysis of Q and Kerrang! magazine to help you explain your planning and design decisions for your own music magazine

Research - Impact - Planning

• Some people are launching into their photography without having fully established a sense of their magazine’s brand identity or how they want to represent their artists in the magazine.

• It’s essential that you do this first, so that your findings inform your planning decisions and to ensure that you take the right sort of photographs in the first place!

• Think about it like a three-part process…

Refer to this lesson from 26/11/12 to ensure you understand the importance of linking your research and planning together and check that you are able to answer the first four questions in detail before proceeding!

The key features of a magazine cover

As previously discussed and to use as a reminder - Ensure you are able to identify the following when analysing music magazine and also when constructing your own magazine.

The features of a magazine cover

Masthead:                         The name of the newspaper or magazine.

Skyline:                                This is at the very top of the page and gives information about what the magazine has to offer i.e. free posters / competitions.

Slogan:                                 The words associated with the magazine or product the magazine is advertising i.e. ‘Because you’re worth it’

Anchorage Text:               This is the writing that is next to the main picture so it tells you what the main picture is about.

Price:                                     This is usually hidden in a corner if the magazine is expensive or written in large writing if the magazine is cheap.

Main Image:                       This is the big picture in the middle of the page or there may be lots of different pictures however there is usually one bigger than the rest. This is the main image.

Bar code:                             This is so the magazine can be scanned at the checkout till, the barcode is usually in the corner.

Sell Lines:                            These are the writing down the sides or along the bottom of the front page, this gives information about the other articles inside the magazine.

Layout:                                 Is the front cover very organised or is it very busy? Are there lots of arrows and text boxes or lots of puffs? Does the front cover say ‘You’ or ‘Your’ a lot?

Puff:                                      This is in the shape of a circle or a star and it gives other information about the magazine articles.

Colour Scheme:                What colours are being used? Is it pink? Is it for women or girls?

As promised an example of a level 1 music magazine!

An example of a level 4 music magazine

Research and planning: Progress check

Remember, you should be keeping a close eye on the production schedule for your magazine, which can be found here.

Many of you are falling behind and you are not making use of the resources on this blog. In order to move forward with the planning phase you should have done the following and posted your findings on your blog:

• Researched the music magazine industry 
• Researched examples of music magazines - their brand identities, audiences and content analysis
• Identified the genre for your own magazine - explaining how you have reached your decisions (not just because you like it!)
• Researched the conventions of this genre and the personae of typical artists from this genre (mood boards would be useful for this - check out the examples on the blog)
• Researched the conventions of magazine design for your chosen genre - including detailed textual analyses of front covers, contents pages and double page spreads, which you link back to the magazines' respective brands and target audiences.
• Taken this research to your audience and get their feedback on what they want from a music magazine

As we stressed when you produced your school magazine, it's essential that you reflect on  your findings and identify how they will influence your decisions about your own magazine.

Then, you are ready to start planning the following and explaining reasons for your decisions, based on your research findings.

The magazine in general:

• Your magazine's 'brand identity' and mode of address - You should explain how you will lay out your magazine in a way that reflects the brand identity. Use the example we did together, analysing Q magazine to help you.
• A flat plan for your magazine showing the contents
• Your magazine's title and masthead
• Your choice of register, colours, fonts etc. to form a style guide for your magazine

The artists you will photograph for your magazine:

• Your choices of models
• The 'star images' or 'personae' you are going to construct
• Costume, hair and make-up
• Gesture codes and modes of address
• Camera shots and angles and lighting you will use
• Locations, props, colours you will associate with these artists

Your front cover, DPS and contents page:

• What you will include and how they will be laid out (hand-drawn drafts are fine for this at first - you can scan these in and upload them on to your blog, accompanied by either a written or audio commentary)

Research music magazines: Media Packs

Remember, you should not be making sweeping generalisations about existing media and their target audiences based on personal hunches.

Publishers spend a great deal of time putting together media packs, which can be a useful starting point for finding out about magazines and their audiences - so make the most of them!

Here are some links to get you started - and then it's over to you to find out more information about your chosen magazines...

http://magazines.bauermediaadvertising.com/magazines/detail/kerrang

http://www.vibelifestylenetwork.com/VLN-Media-Kit-2012.pdf

http://www.ipcmedia.com/nme

http://www.ipcmedia.com/uncut

http://magazines.bauermediaadvertising.com/magazines/detail/Q

A case study of NME's advertising campaign for Dell

A case study of the relationship between Shockwaves and NME

A case study of the relationship between River Island and NME

Why not really impress the examiner and produce a Media Pack for your own music magazine and upload it on to your blog as part of your planning phase? Or if you really want to show off, you could film yourself pitching advertising space in your magazine to a key advertiser for a product that would appeal to your target audience...

Music magazines: Getting started

You should have already read this post from 14th September, to start you thinking about the music industry and the magazines are already on the market and the issues and challenges they face.

Using the magazines you brought in for homework, your next step is to analyse the contents of at least three different magazines and from this, begin to draw conclusions about genre, target audience and the mode of address that your chosen magazine adopts.

Click here for the powerpoint for Monday's lesson (22nd October 2012) and here for a blank content analysis grid

Click here for a useful list of UK Music magazines, recommended by The British Council

Click here for a guide to existing media (grouped by genre) that another AS Media student has published via Slideshare

New blog address for music magazines - Deadline this Thursday

- Click on the Blogger icon in the top left section of your blog to go to your dashboard.
- Click on 'New Blog'
- Call your new blog something like 'Name's AS Music Magazine Coursework' and choose an appropriate blog address
- Please email your new address to beaverwoodmedia@gmail.com
- Your first post should be entitled: 'Link to School Magazine Blog' and you should copy and paste a hyperlink to your school magazine blog (even if this blog is still in progress)

Rethinking Research

As promised, this post include lots of links to useful resources to help you with your research for your music magazine.

Here's the powerpoint from Monday's lesson, which outlines the key points we discussed:
Reflecting on research lesson - Monday 15th October


Audience research 

What are focus groups and how to run them
Conducting a focus group
A guide to using focus groups for research
An example of a student's analysis of her focus group findings (it would be better to include a video link as well, though)

A few examples of mood boards - useful prompts for focus groups 

http://catherinebaker-as.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/moodboard.html
http://brianair.wordpress.com/as-film-studies/moodboard/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTY8vueiYSM - a multimedia example!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajzeu8cgj-0&feature=related - a student talking about her mood board and how it will influence her new music magazine

Using your blog to gather information

Check out these very simple instructions which explain how to include a survey using blogger. The drawback is, you can only ask one question, so choose carefully! But remember you could update it at different points in your research. E.g. Which of these music magazines do you read? Then, later in your coursework, you could upload your magazine and ask your audience questions such as whether they think you have successfully followed the conventions of your chosen genre; would they buy the magazine; do they think it represents the star image in 'X' way, etc. etc.

Alternatively, if you'd like to be able to ask more questions, you can sign up for a free Survey Monkey account to create a whole survey online.

Research into existing media

Click here for the powerpoint for Monday's lesson (22nd October 2012) and here for a blank content analysis grid

Click here for a useful list of UK Music magazines, recommended by The British Council

Click here for a guide to existing media (grouped by genre) that another AS Media student has published via Slideshare

Media packs and target audiences of existing media

Music magazines: Institution and audience research

Music magazines suffer sales decline

Uncut loses 14.2% year-on-year circulation followed by NME and Q as worst-hit music titles in second half of 2011

• Share15
• Email

• Josh Halliday
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 February 2012 15.27 GMT

Uncut magazine lost 14.2% of circulation year-on-year in the second half of 2011 in a bad period for music magazines. Photograph: Uncut

Q, NME and and Uncut suffered double-digit year-on-year sales declines in another torrid period for the music magazine sector in the second half of 2011.

Every magazine in the sector that reported a year-on-year comparison saw sales decline against the second half of 2010, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the six months to December released on Thursday.

Uncut magazine was the biggest circulation faller among musicmagazines in the second half of 2011. The IPC Media title shed 14.2% of its circulation year-on-year and 5.6% compared to the first half of 2011, to 62,305.

The magazine's IPC stablemate NME reported a 14% drop year-on-year, to 27,650 sales – a 4.7% decline compared to the previous six months.

Q saw its circulation fall 12.1% year on year, to 77,522. The BauerMedia title remains the second biggest-selling paid-for music magazine despite a 3.5% period on period drop in sales.

Mojo remained the best-selling paid-for title in the music market, with a 0.3% period-on-period lift in sales to 87,555. However, the title fell 7.5% on the second half of 2010.

Mojo's Bauer stablemate, Q, fell 3.6% compared to the first half of last year, to 77,522 – a 12.1% year-on-year decline.

The rock title Kerrang! fell slightly on the period, shedding 2.2% of sales to 42,077 after an impressive first half of 2011. The title fell 2.1% compared to the second half of 2010.

Future Plus's free title Odeon Magazine held onto its position as the biggest title in the film market. Odeon Magazine reported a 3.7% distribution drop compared to the first half of last year, to 179,840 – a 3.4% year-on-year decline.

Empire magazine remains the biggest-selling paid-for film title, despite a 2.3% period on period fall and 3.2% yearly fall in sales, to 167,056.

Empire's rival, Total Film, managed to remain above the 70,000 sales mark with only a 1.3% circulation drop on the previous six months – a 9.9% drop compared to the final half of 2010, to 70,908.

Click below for more interesting articles:
Drop in circulations
The relaunch of 'Uncut'
'Music magazine covers no longer grab me'
A 'pocket-sized' music magazine - now 10 years old and the format clearly hasn't taken off yet!
Closure of 'The Word' 
Criticism of British music magazines - This could offer useful evidence to justify your decision to subvert certain conventions
Magazines will always have a place on people's shelves