PLANNING CHECKLIST WITH RELEVANT QUESTIONS FOR CROSS-REFERENCING

Use the table below to structure your planning. The order of the table is the order your slides should be in.

- Orange rows are slides that form chapter headings in your planning to break it down for the examiner.

- Grey rows are compulsory slides.

- Green rows are tasks that may not have been done; if you haven't got these don't worry

You're doing really well, nearly there :-)

AS Media Planning Checklist

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Good examples of evaluations from last year

UNSIGNED.

This is particularly good for:
- presenting work in an interesting way
- concise explanation
- use of terminology
- analysis and reflection

A Grade PowerPoint "Unsigned " Music Mag

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Board notes on Q6: Which Institution Would Distribute Your Product and Why?

Key terms for answering this question are:

Institution: The company that produces and owns the BRAND/ PUBLICATION, for example the institution for Doctor Who is the BBC

Distribute: How the brand is accessed by the audience. It is important that you use the term "DISTRIBUTE", it is not simply a case of shipping the print magazines to the supermarket. Brands are distributed via many PLATFORMS: online, via social networking sites, in print, by radio, TV and smartphones, among others.

Platforms: How a brand is accessed (see above).

Synergy: Two or more brands, institutions, agencies, advertisers, devices, platforms etc WORKING TOGETHER TO SHARE AUDIENCES (more detailed notes and examples coming soon)

OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS:

CONSUME
CONVERGENCE

Below are the notes from the board explaining the relationship between ADVERTISERS, AUDIENCES and INSTITUTION

CODES AND CONVENTIONS CHECKLISTS

You know by now that regardless of genre, all music magazines follow certain CONVENTIONS, because as a culture we expect certain CODES in our media texts. 


What follows are checklists of conventions and codes that you should try to include in your work. But remember, as well as USING conventions in your work, it has to look professional; you are marked for how well you UNDERSTAND the features you are employing not how many you use, as you will have to DECONSTRUCT your own work in detail.


TIP: always have a music magazine on your desk to refer to as you work. At this point it is better to have a real magazine rather than a JPEG on your desktop so you can study the text in detail. 


Stop reading the magazines as if you are a member of the audience: instead of looking for bands and articles that you like you must detach yourself from the text and analyse how the pages are built; front covers, contents and double page spreads all follow a FORMULA, that you can play with depending on the AUDIENCE and the IDEOLOGIES you are portraying.


And always step back from the screen, look at your work and see if it looks balanced.

FRONT COVER CHECKLIST

• A clear, well- lit image of your star.
• Rule of thirds
• masthead across the top 1/6 of the page, starting in the top left corner
• Star's eyes in the top 1/3 of the page
• All text in capitals, different sizes to delineate headings and sub-headings
• Sans serif or serif fonts depending on genre
• Two/three colours with one contrasting colour to draw the eye to special features e.g. prizes
• How are representations created through the combination of star, brand, text and the values connoted to the audience?
• Unique Selling Point: what makes your mag different to all the others on the shelf? Star, masthead, branding and what these symbolise, giveaways
• Mode of address
• Features justified to the side of the page, not the centre
• Lines of text within each feature very close together- use individual pieces of word art
• Not more than three small words per line
• Feature relating to star should be biggest on the page and anchored to the star
• make sure fonts are easy to read and look professional.
• At least five features
• banner/ strap at top or bottom of page
• price and date
• tagline under the masthead

Male Hip-Hop

Good photography creates a narrative, as shown in the other posts. With hip-hop and other urban genres (grime etc) it is particularly important that you create a story for the reader. 

For urban genres (music that originates from deprived, inner-city areas) the origins and backgrounds of the stars are very much a part of the music. 


Hard childhoods, social injustice, crime, politics, close-knit communities, even slavery (hip hop beats are derived from African tribal music which has mixed with American influences over generations), all have their part to play. 


All this needs to be communicated in the photography through location, costume, facial expression and pose, props, lighting, eye contact and colours. 

Hip Hop originated in Harlem and the Bronx, two of the most deprived areas of New York. There are four "elements": DJing, MCing, breakdancing and graffiti. "Guns, Bitches and Bling" are recent additions as the genre has become a mainstream, multi-million dollar industry.

Men's clothes tend to be oversized in hip hop. This is a reference to growing up in a ghetto: families were poor so clothes were handed down from brother to brother. Therefore, the bigger your clothes, the bigger your brother, and the less likely you were to get beaten up.

Mos Def

Jay-Z

Li'l Wayne

Eminem

Black "prison- style" tattoos are also an important part of the genre. Black tattoos originated in American prisons, so the imply a hard life, serious crime, retribution and possibly regret. Some tattoos have specific meaning, like the teardrop tattoo, but meaning tends to be personal to the wearer.


There is a uniform with Hip Hop: wife beater vests, big jeans, jewellery, baseball caps, tattoos, sunglasses, crucifixes, sneakers (usually Nike or Adidas). No smiles.

Popstars No2: Girl Bands

Girls Aloud

The Saturdays

Even though they are not wearing the same, there is a definite "look" for girl bands: look as if you are about to go clubbing/ on the pull. Little dresses, big heels, big hair (though one member tends to have short hair), lots of make up. Poses also tend to repeat across the genre: chests out, backs arched, hands on hips, "fierce" gaze.

However, while this appears to be all for the benefit of the male audience, this performance is mostly for females; dresses, shoes and accessories are deliberately chosen from the high street so girls can recreate the look, hair is long, glossy and the styles look "natural", meaning they are achievable.

These girls are not threatening to other females, they seem more like a group of friends- you can imagine them getting ready together and sharing a taxi home, unlike this band: