Pre-Production Planning

Masthead / Typeface I have decided to call my magazine SoundCrash. I have done this because I like the name and I think it illustrates the kind of music I will be putting across with my magazine. As crash is a strong word and you associates it with loud banging noises which is what rock music includes. My magazine has two unique selling points which I think will encourage my target audience even more to buy this magazine. The two points are 1) my magazine enforces new and existing artists to promote them and make it all about the music, and not the fame. 2) The second unique selling point of my magazine is that it Involves the fan base as much as possible so they can feel closer to their favourite artists and bands, SoundCrash do this by running monthly competitions to enter your specific fan question for the next months upcoming band or artist which one of our journalists will ask them in the interview. I think this will encourage my target audience to not only buy our magazine, also get involved and also this will spread the word about our magazine making it more popular, making more money for SoundCrash.
My masthead is going to follow the conventions of many other rock magazines by following the font conventions. This is the fact the text isnt bright and pink and colourful, as my target audience wont be attracted to buy this. And this would be going against conventions of the magazine which I want to produce, therefore it wouldnt sell. The font is cover to be similar to some of the following popular rock magazines. The sort of typeface I would like is something with is dark and bold and shows a kind of edgy in your face feeling. Some of the below mastheads are from popular music magazines around today which is something along those lines is something I would like to put into my magazine. I think it adds to the rock feeling by having quite a harsh typeface.

Photo-shoot / Model From researching certain rock magazines and looking specifically at the model and how they dress / look / act and pose I now have a clear idea of the conventions which these rock magazines follow when styling and creating their models. I can use this to create and style my model to also follow these conventions to ensure I attract my target audience. I understand the specific look I have gone for is very stereotypically but it is the convention of this type of magazine and therefore my audience will appreciate it and feel comfortable purchasing it.

My model is going to wear black clothes this is a stereotypical view point of how someone who liked rock music would dress but it is a conventional way of portraying this specific genre of music and people who appreciate it. After looking at models of preview popular rock magazines for the certain pose they pull I can see they dont smile, they either have a blank look or they are pulling some sort of face which may relate to them playing a certain instrument or singing. So this confirms to me that my model cant be standing next to a bus stop with a massive grin on their face. In order to ensure high sales my model has to follow the conventions that other magazines have laid down. Below I have included some models of popular rock magazines to get a feel of how I am going to style and make my model look. I am also going to be taking more than one photo as I will need one for the front image, one for the contents page and a few for the double page spread. All of these photos are going to be different as using the same image isnt conventional and would look extremely unprofessional and readers would get bored. Im going to have my location for my photo-shoot as somewhere with a plain backdrop, for example a white wall, or a white sheet as a backdrop. This is because I want all of the focus on my model and not the background. This follows the conventions of a magazine as most cover images have a plain background, if the background was busy and there was cover lines and a masthead people wouldnt be able to make any sense of it because it would simply be too busy. Im going to have a medium close up as my cover image as this fits the conventions of a modern day magazine. It is also going to be portrait this will be easier to edit in, for the simple reason that if I had a landscape image it would be squashed when I tried to edit into Photoshop or InDesign.

Interview for double page spread I have two individual main selling points of my magazine, one of these main selling points about my magazine is that it produces and gives the readers exclusive information about the people in which it interviews. So in my interview I am going to try and collect some exclusive information from the band / artist I interview. A tour date? A new album? Something along those lines that the readers will appreciate. When I was analysing other magazines for example Kerrang, and NME I took note of how they interview artists and /or bands and looked at what sort of question they asked them. It was normally something to do with a new album or tour that was launching and what they were planning on doing in the future, so I will ask my artist / band questions along these lines, this will produce exclusive information for my readers to enjoy. Im going to structure my interview in a answer, question form. The diagram below of an interview from a magazine that supports my specific audience that I aiming my magazine at. I believe this will be the clearest and easiest way to display my interview as I feel some interviews in magazines which dont have the answer / question form are rather complicated to follow. At the end of the paragraphs I never really feel like Ive understood the specific question so I think this is the easiest way to display it.

This is the way I am going to structure my interview, a question in bold and then the answer below. I think this is the best way to structure my interview, and follows conventions of my specific genre of magazine as most of them do this.

What sort of questions am I going to ask? my unique selling point of my magazine is that it strives to produce new and exisiting musicans and promote them. My interview is going to enfore this and in the interview I am going to ask questions which will inform audicences of how the artist that I am interviewing is going to make a big influence in the music scene in 2014.

Are you currently working on anything exciting and new? Who influences you when you write your songs? Are they created from past experiences? The new album is currently at number 1 in our Kerrang charts, did you ever expect it to do this well? When it comes to album shoots and radio are you set on saying what you want? Or are you pretty flexible and bend to what the photographers want? My music magazine also brings in a lot of fans and public participation which is another one of the key selling points of my magazine, so this interview will include two fan questions to involve the fan base and make them feel a part of the specific artist I am interviewing. * fan question * * fan question * (this will be produced from research I will conduct which will ask my target audience this question if there was one thing you could ask your favourite band or artist what would it be? to make is easier for my audience to answer this I will set tick boxes for them to tick which will give ma basic idea of what they would ask, from this I can create a question which I think my target audience would ask. From the topic that they have ticked, this will give me a clear idea of the sort of questions my target audience would want to ask and therefore I can put in a real life question.

This is the question that I asked people, to get some sort of idea of what people would ask their favourite artist so I could use these topics to create a real life question for my interview. I was careful to stay within my niche market, the questions I have asked I think are generic but most people would ask them something within these lines. By outlining topics it gives the people answering a easier job and it also makes it easier for me to analyse an create a conclusion from so I can structure two good fan questions for the double page spread interview section of my magazine.

I decided I was going to ask 20 people and calculate results from this in graph form.

Fan questionnare

How did the band members meet? Musical Inspirations? Fav place to tour?

Working on anything new? Favourite song they have released? Future plans?

From the results I have collected I can see that the most popular topics are if they are working on anything new and their/his/hers musical inspirations. So using this information I have collected I will create two fan questions to ask in my interview. What is going to appear inside of my magazine? Obviously the contents of my magazine is the most vital part as its the bit that everyone will read and hopefully read and enjoy. When working in the media industry it is important to plan ahead to create a solid structure of what is going to be in the magazine and where everything is going, this is so the construction stage is much simpler and easier to create. While creating and planning the construction of my magazine and how I am going to put it all together I continue to remind myself that I must stick to the conventions of most modern magazines so the general public feel comfortable buying my magazine. This is that the masthead is bold and clear and the front cover photo is a midclose up and is clear and not too busy. I also must be conscious that having a bare code, a date, and a price as clearly shown as possible is a convention and also a necessity. I have begun designing flat plans which will give me the specific measurements I need to create my magazine, I will do this in InDesign. Any specific alterations I want to make to my photos I will do this in Photoshop.

Contents page ideas:

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Interview the double page spread interview Competitions win gig tickets, vouchers, clothes, signed items etc. Special features stories. Upcoming Gigs whats going on and where? Notifying my audience of gigs which they may enjoy and want to attend. 5. New bands realised for festivals (download as it is a rock festival) 6. New Artists my magazine is keep to promote new artists this is one of my unique selling points so this will feature in the contents page. 7. Features bands featured on the front cover etc. 8. Regular Editions Blog entrys 9. Editors Note a simple note from the editor 10. Posters free posters. 11. Album Review reviews of albums and singles realised within the time the magazine was being constructed 12. News any big musical news, has anyone broken up? Anyone got back together? Etc. 13. Quiz a quiz to test musical knowledge that people may enjoy doing, this will become and monthly feature. 14. Monthly Live Session Review a live session that happens every month is reviewed by a member of Soundcrashs team and feedback and pictures are given here. 15. Picture section pictures of band members or artist which link with the genre of my magazine.