Contents Page Conventions Analysis

Images from front cover photoshoot

These are a selection of the final images that I took for the front cover of my music magazine. I set up a key light to left of the model and used only this light to leave one side of the mask in light, and the rest in shadow. I felt that this enhanced the mysterious look of the model wearing a mask, enticing the audience to find out more. I did this because my artist on the front cover believes that popular music is becoming too much about what the artist looks like and not what they sound like, and that audiences are too used to being able to judge whether they will like an artist simply by how they look. My artist wants to break these barriers by wearing a mask, so that to the audience, it could be anyone under the mask.

Mock Up (using found images)

This is a quick mock-up I did using found images to show the ideal colour scheme and to look into the logistics of actually creating the front cover. I encountered problems because the main image on the front cover is a close up, therefore I needed to make it bigger to fit it onto the page. I will use a medium-close up instead as this is more conventional to magazine front covers and also will mean that I will have more room to include other content like headline stories.

I took the inspiration for my colour scheme from the NME front cover I used on my mood board, showing a black and white image with other content in red on the front cover therefore they stand out and will catch the readers eye on the shelf.

I also took inspiration from the NME front cover by having the information about a competition in the magazine inside a coloured bubble, in my actual front cover I will make this smaller as I feel it is a little too dominant on this mock-up front cover.

Practice Shots

These images are before I adjusted the lighting in the room, they show the contrast and effect of the lighting.



Location/Mise-en-scene

The location and mise-en-scene that I use for front cover will need to be iconographic of the genre of music that my magazine represents. With my magazine falling under the ‘alternative’ genre, the location and mise-en-scene needs to also be unique compared to other genres. For inspiration, I tried looking at album artwork of a few of my favourite artists within this genre. While doing this, I found that I enjoyed the majority of album artwork for a band called ‘tame impala’ and that they were all in a similar style. I researched further into their album artwork and found that they were done by an artist called ‘Leif Podhajsky’. I found that he is an artist that has created album artwork for the majority of ‘tame impala’s music and for a lot of other artists that I have listened to in the past. Instead of having a clear location in the background of the model, I could edit the image in a 'Leif Podhajsky' style manor so that it becomes unclear, therefore showing my magazine's alternative style. The actual logistics of this idea may be a problem however, as 'Leif Podhajsky's' work is actually at a professional standard and may prove extremely challenging to make my image look anything close. Furthermore, if the background of my image is too extreme and confusing to the eye, it may become hard to read the text placed over it. Here is a link to his page, showing his recent work. To see all recent work follow this link, a splash page will appear showing his most recent work, simply click anywhere on the page and his portfolio will appear. http://www.leifpodhajsky.com/

Mood Board & Editing Ideas

Costume Ideas - Mask

MF DOOM, an artist famous for wearing a mask reveals why he wears his mask in an interview. He believes that music should not be about what you look like and that the coroporate idea of trying to make what the artist looks like appeal to an audience to make it sell is wrong. He believes that music should be about how it sounds and the artists 'straight skills' as he puts it. What he liked about the idea of a mask was that it could be anyone behind the mask, no matter what gender, 'race' etcetera, which I find inspiring and therefore my idea of my model wearing a mask has been confirmed. Furthermore, in my article for my double page spread, I could have my artist talking about why they are wearing the mask and say similar things to MF DOOM.