Work for this week

1. Design three alternative mastheads for your sixth form magazine, upload and annotate your choices.
2. Take the pictures for your student magazine, remember the front cover must be mid shot. You should remember to include signs and signifiers that can have mediated meanings. Upload the unedited version so we can see how you have edited it and then upload one that is similar but unsuitable.
Don't forget you will need pictures for your contents page so take lots.
3. Think about secondary headlines and cover stories.
4. Flatplan for contents page.

You all need to improve the quality of your language. You must use the worksheets and handouts and lift the language from those when annotating your work. Nothing should be uploaded and not annotated. Key terms relevant to this part of the process would be:
denotation & connotation
signs and signifiers
motivated signs
semiotics
representation
micro, macro
audience, niche audience
genre
conventions
framing and composition
anchorage

Typography Powerpoint

Work for Monday's lesson

Read this powerpoint first about Typography.

Then devise at least three different mastheads for your Student magazine, upload and annotate

Work for the weekend

1. Complete annotation of 6th form magazine.
2. You need to sketch out a flatplan of how you would like your front cover to look and upload it to your blog. If you don't have a scanner then take a photo of it & upload it.
3. There will be time to take photos in class next week but if you want to shoot in a more exotic location than school then feel free to take them over the weekend.

What you have to do for Foundation Portfolio

Print
Preliminary excercise : using DTP and Photoshop, produce:
1. The front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead.
2. A mock-up of the layout of the contents page.

3. Main task: the front page, contents and double age spread of a new music magazine.
All images and text used must be original and produced by you. You must include a minimum of four images.

4. Blogging: Presentation of the research, planning and evaluation should be done in the format of a blog. This MUST be kept up to date. It should be as multi- platform as possible, for instance, you can film your focus group & interview them about magazines. You could film your photo shoot. Scan your flatplans & include those. You should include screen shots of links & quotes to research sources. Try nimating your mood board & include background music. You could keep a video diary of your progress through the work. You can create powerpoint presentations & upload them to slideshare to include on your blog. You can record a podcast of you answering the evaluation questions.

The more imaginative and multi-modal, the better!


Assessment:This unit is marked out of a total of 100 marks: 20 marks for presentation of the planning and research; 60 marks for the construction; 20 marks for the evaluation

Homework Task

Find an example of a student magazine and annotate it using the handout and previous blog post to help you. Lay it out in the style of the Courtney Love Elle magazine.

How to analyse magazines

Some useful prompts to think about when analysing magazines.

Consider the title of the magazine: Why is it called that?What are the significant words?What connotations do they have?
The publisher of the magazine: Who publishes the magazine? What other magazines (if any) does it publish? What other media interests (if any) does it have?
How much does the magazine cost? How often is it published?
What is its circulation/readership?Does the magazine have a website?

The target audience for the magazine: What type of reader is it targeting?
How do you know this (i.e. types of articles and advertisements)?
How does the reader ‘interact’ with the magazine?
The cover of the magazine: Analyse the images on the cover; the types of facial expressions, body language, clothing, etc used.
What do they tell us about the target audience for the magazine? What else appears on the cover?
Why are particular typefaces, types of graphics, colours, etc used? Why are particular items in the magazine featured? Does the cover look similar to other magazines? If so, why? If not, how does it look different?
The ‘style’ of presentation of the magazine:What do you notice about the magazine’s presentation? Does it look cheap or expensive? How does it compare with other similar magazines? How does it use colour, print style, artwork, etc, to convey an overall effect?

The ‘mode of address’ of the magazine: How does it address its reader? How and when are readers allowed to address the magazine?What types of articles/features does it contain? What subjects are covered?
The advertisements that appear in the magazine: What are the main types of products being advertised? What is their price range? Who are they aimed at? Why are these products featured particularly? How do the models featured in the advertisements relate to the target audience?

Representations in the magazine: How are men and women represented? (look at both the images and the text) re there conflicting representations? If so, why is this? How do these representations relate to readership? Is there a limited range of representations for men and women? If so, what are they and why?
What groups do not appear in the pages of the magazine? Why?
Are celebrities featured in the magazine? If so, what kinds of celebrities? Why have they been chosen? The competition for the magazine: What other titles are in competition with it?What are their circulation/readership figures? How much do they cost? What are the similarities/differences?
and finally...
What do you think are the reasons for its popularity (or otherwise)? What does the magazine offer its readers? What ‘values’ or ideologies are implicit in the magazine?

Welcome to Media Studies

Welcome to Media Studies. You will be studying three main topics across two units.

Unit 1: Coursework
'Foundation Portfolio'
A sixth form magazine front cover.
The front cover, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.
Accompanied by a blog that contains:
generic research
audience research
planning & evaluation.

Unit 2: 2 hour examination
TV drama
The UK film Industry


You must get into the habit of following this blog and updating your own after every lesson. Make sure you 'follow' it and bookmark it on your browsers.
Here is a link to the Chief Examiner's Blog