The end of Meltdown

Dear Moderator,
My name is Millie McGovern and my candidate number is 8023.
I have come to the end of my task and finished everything that needed to be done.
I hope you enjoy marking my work :)

Evaluation.

http://prezi.com/9pc096hwvqgl/evaluation/

This is my evaluation of my muisic magazine, Meltdown, I created on Prezi.

Double Page Spread.

This is my finished double page spread I used a photo of the boys mucking around for the background which seemed to add more character to the band. I used photos of them in the 'studio' (mentioned in the article) at the side for added effect. I wrote my article a while ago and, from reading many Kerrang and Rocksound articles, I hopefully used the correct language and style. I pulled out a quote from the article from the 'lead singer' mainly because the lead man seems to have the most attention and popularity so would catch the audience attention. I added a background to the text so you could read it but still see the band through it. For the title I doubled up the band name for effect and the slight move makes it look like it's moved fast, like the bands name Run For Cover.

Contents Page.

This is my finished contents page. I carried on the style of my cover by using the purple, black and white colours. I also used only three fonts: the magazine name style, Impact and Arial. I arranged four of the boys from year 13 to be the main feature on the contents page as I thought if I had the cover, contents and DPS to all be of the same band it would be too much and from looking at other magazines decided that it's usually this way. I used the edited photo of Lauren, a photo of myself and photos I took at a You Me At Six signing in December 2010.
 

Front Cover.

 

This is my front cover. I chose three fonts which I will use throughout my magazine. The first is my title font, Birth Of A Hero. My second is Impact and the third, more formal text is Arial Narrow. My main colours are black, white and purple. I chose purple because I haven't seen it on a rock/indie magazine before so mine would be original. I added outer glows to main things like the band name and the picture of the two girls for effect and to make the cover more exciting.

I'm happy with my front cover and think that it goes by the rules most magazines follow, yet still being original. I still need to add a bar code but I think that will be the only change I make to the cover.

Preliminary Task.

This is the final copy of my school magazine I designed for my preliminary task. I used photoshop to add text and edit the photos I'd taken earlier in the week.  

Thinking about my evaluation.

Before I start my evaluation I have been looking at the questions and thinking about my response for each.

- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- Who would be the audience for your media product?
- How did you attract/address your audience?
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Interview with Run For Cover.

This is the question and answer interview I wrote for the double page spread of my magazine. I read many interviews from similar magazines to draw inspiration from and get an idea of the questions and answers they have inside a rock magazine.

"We join the boys in Run For Cover at their school in Harlow Essex, it’s a Saturday but it’s still the place they feel most comfortable practicing in, “we’re just used to it,” drummer Robert Millwaters tells us. Robert’s joined by the other two members of the band, guitarist and vocals Jake Horton and bassist Sam Harvey. On first glance they look like three kids just having a laugh in school, and they protest that that’s still what they are, but to the world they’re the hottest rock band to come out of England since You Me At Six and they’re quickly rising to the top of the rock ‘n’ roll ladder. At 16 and 17 years old they’re still struggling to cope with touring and getting the grades they want at sixth form. They’re newest single, Predilection, stormed the rock charts and entered at number 24 in the top 40. With their new debut album ‘Nostalgia’ hitting the stores next month we caught up with them to find out what we can expect to hear, the hardships of school and what they’re doing with their new found fame.

So, how do you feel about your first cover on MELTDOWN?
Jake: I can’t believe we weren’t asked sooner!
Sam:  Haha! Yeah, it’s great.
Robert: I remember reading this magazine a few years ago when it came out, and wishing that someday I could be on the cover, I never thought it’d actually happen!

Is the fame getting to you yet?
Jake: Someone asked for a photo with me in London the other day, I really thought they were joking.

Sam: It’s so surreal that people actually recognise us and our music!
Robert: I heard Predilection on Eastenders the other day. Eastenders!

Did you expect you’re first single to do so well?
Robert: Of course not!
Jake: We recorded it in my garage and sent it to Raw Power expecting to hear nothing back.
Sam: Never dreamed we’d enter the top 40! How did that even happen?

So, this is all pretty new for you guys! How long have you been trying to break into the business?
Sam: Is it bad that it’s been less than a year?
Robert: Yeah, I feel bad; I go to my local venue and see all these talented bands that have been touring for years. We’re living their dream.
Jake: We’re extremely fortunate.
You’re extremely modest! We hear that you’re still at school?

Jake: Yeah! Even on a Saturday!

Sam: We’re in our first year at sixth form at the moment.
Are you going to quit to concentrate on the band?

Robert: Well I want to. But SOME people would rather stay at school.

Sam: Rob’s just annoyed that we actually want an education.
Jake: Nothing in this business is permanent, we don’t think it’s worth leaving school for something that could just be one popular song... and our mums wouldn’t let us!
Sam: Yeah! That’s true!
So when can we expect to see you on tour?

Jake: We’ve already got a tour scheduled for the whole of summer!
Robert: We can’t wait!

Sam: We have some smaller gigs coming up in nearby areas though.

Do any of you guys drive? How are you going to get around?

Robert: Me and Jake are the only ones old enough to drive, I wouldn’t trust me.
Sam:  I wouldn’t trust either of you! My dad drives us in his work van most of the time.
Jake: Proper rock ‘n’ roll!

Haha! We’re all so excited to hear the new album, Nostalgia! Tell us about it?

Jake: It’s awesome, buy it!
Sam: We are pretty proud of it.
Robert: It’s obviously got Predilection on it and the rest of the songs are just as catchy so we hope everyone likes it.

Sam: There’s a few like Predilection, a few slow ones and then some in between. We aim to please everyone!
We’ve had a secret listen to it before it’s out and we must say it’s really good! What’s your favourite one from the album?
Sam: Thank you! I think mine is probably Millie, it’s about our really close girl mate, she’s really helped us out through this.

Robert: Predilection, you can’t beat it.
Jake: Predilection. No, wait! Signs… Or Good Company… Maybe Trials. Oh I can’t decide!

Do you have any advice for aspiring bands?
Jake: Send in as many songs to as many record companies as you can!
Sam: Continue touring as many places as you can, get yourself known.

Robert: Have fun! Stop trying to get to the top and just enjoy it, we thought this wouldn’t go anywhere and were happy with that, it should always be about the music.

Nostalgia is out on the 22^nd April for download and to buy."

House Style.

From looking at other magazines I could tell that houstyle was very important and needed to be well thought out if I was going to have a successful looking magazine. It's important to make your magazine pages look like they come from the same magazine. The same font and colours make all the difference. 

This is a small section of my front page. As you can see, I've used the colours purple, white and black and this stays the same throughout the magazine. My title font is different because it's original and only used for the title of the magazine but I used again on the contents page. The other fonts I used were Impact and Arial, I used Impact for headings and important things to get people's attention and Arial for the descriptions and articles so it's easy to read.

This cropped section of my contents page clearly shows the link with my front cover. The text is in Impact and Arial and I've used the white on purple again and black text.

Here is a cropped section of my DPS and again it shows the house style. The black text and purple make it easily recognisable and in line with the rest of my magazine. Again, I used Impact and Arial.

Feedback.

In the lesson we went around and looked at others work to get some feedback and see what we could improve and work on. I didn't get given anything to work on which is nice; either people are really nice or my works quite good! This is the feedback:

Alice: I love the effect around the text and your title looks great!
Georgina: I like how you've dressed the boys, you can tell what genre your magazine is and it looks interesting

Sam: You've paid attention to the left third rule and it's effective! Like how you didn't make the 'WIN' go over my face, good editing!

Dom: Looks great! :)

Barcode.

This is the barcode I used on the front of my magazine, I typed into google 'Magazine barcode' and this is what came up. I liked that it was longer than quite a few others I'd seen as I'd left quite a large space for it.