Music Magazines: Media Language

 Look carefully at the front covers of MOJO and RNR magazines. 

QUESTION: How far do MOJO and RNR use different media language to create different connotations? (CONNOTATION meaning: an idea or quality that a word makes you think about in addition to its meaning.)

Answer on your blog. This is a high-value question and should take all lesson to answer. You can use the class blog search engine for more examples of how to analyse music magazines.

In your answer you should have 2 paragraphs:

• analyse the media language in MOJO and RNR magazine. 'Media language' includes the placement of the main image, the type of photography, lighting, colours, fonts, how busy or restrained the cover is, the layout (such as alignment to the margins), how serious or playful 
• make judgements and draw conclusions about how far the media language is used differently in both extracts to create different connotations. Are there similarities in both covers? What sorts of audiences are they targeting? You could think about MOJO's rock aesthetic of living loud and dangerously compared to RNR's folk, rock, blues vibe. 

The contrast between the red and blue creates a more vivid and expressive character from the Foo Fighters cover. In addition, words like 'adventures' and 'battle' also present them as more bold and determined from the language - accented also by the posture of the cover figure hunched over the title much like a hunting predator. Also, the sans serif font alongside the more 'adventurous' language connotes that they have struggled - 'we've been to...we've been to...' also highlights this, showing that they are both experienced and unshaped by their 'struggles' - displaying a different kind of but still respectable figure compared to the RnR cover.

One of the magazines is busier than the other. MOJO's cover is quite cluttered and busy, due to its numerous cover lines, images and puffs as well as a very dynamic cover mount in neon colours, with a vibrant cartoon image. RnR also has many cover lines, but they are all more minimalistic, and justified to the right-hand margin. They are exclusively in white, creating calm, orderly, uncluttered quality. Equally, the cover mount has modest verbal play, and is very plain and streamlined.

MOJO's choice of colours is vibrant, electric and dynamic, particularly in the primary colours of the cover mount, with its playful skeleton. By contrast, RnR uses soft, dull browns and only red an accent colour.

Although both magazines conform to genre conventions - both magazines centre a star at the centre of visual interest, and both magazines celebrate that star, but MOJO does so in a more dynamic, aggressive, confrontational way compared to RnR's gentle, lowkey, folksy vibe. This is because MOJO targets a primarily male rock audience, while RnR is aimed at folk and blues audiences. 

Also, although both music magazines feature many articles, RnR is more orderly and restrained.

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Statement of Intent

Website

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Lighting and Framing

 Lighting from the side - evokes stronger character, more dramatic, frames half of face in harsh light, but keeps other in 'mystery' (shade basically). 

Lighting from above/below - consider this as well, but for different character types.

Harsh/Soft Lighting - for relatable, relaxed atmosphere, go soft, for more formal, gripping character/atmosphere, go harsher. Also consider warm and cold tones.

Colour palette - when one side is lit in (blue, yellow, etc), shade in the opposite complimentary colour for a better effect (orange, violet, etc). In summary, use this technique for a more engaging image/scene.

Framing - depending on the set, close ups and long shots are equally as dramatic and engaging, but in different ways. (e.g. Queen's Gambit cover, Split cover).

Set - a variety of backgrounds, props, and lighting strung together have different effects, but keep in mind not to keep it too crowded or too bland. Don't rely solely on one element to give a full effect.

Developing Ideas

Front page Layout - photoshop basically a small version of the double layout, but less maze-y in a sense, put still with the aspect of 'screens' used for text and imagery. 

Double Page Layout - layout incorporates the text chunks and images to look like the actual screens at van Gogh Live - small people wandering in and out, + van goth sunflowers growing out behind the screens. Lots of blocky shapes so they should be counter-acted by the growing sunflowers.

Dummy Articles - on the paper plan, but include different aspects of art such as architecture (Minecraft, other programs that incorporate art), business (guy sells 13 year collage for millions) and emotional relation (young teen makes money off of small art business basically), only the middle of which is actually a real event and article, the others are fake but still somewhat realistic.

Main Article - details the event of  Van Gogh Live, his life, his art, and why the reader should go or be interested basically. 

Colour Scheme - like the sunflower paintings themselves, a lot of yellow and yellowish-green and possibly some blues/oranges to balance it out, to compare to the dark background. 

CUFFS QUIZ

Left to right, name the officers (1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) Donna, Lino, Jake, Jo, Ryan, Carl, Chief Super Intendent Robert, Felix

9 Who is this? Misha

10 Name the owner of the corner shop Mohammed

11 Name the racist thug Benson

12 Name the drug addict Nathan

13 Name the mother whose child is taken by her ex husband Mrs Quirk

Cinnamon  - Toothpaste

Exam Practice

 Q.3 How far does Cuffs adapt police drama conventions to fit its family audience at 8 p.m. on BBC1?

In your answer you must

• state what conventions you could expect from most TV police drama
  
• analyse the programme's use of genre conventions, making sure that you cover the whole episode (not just the extract played in the exam). This means explaining all the crimes that occur in the episode and everything that the police have to deal with that may be upsetting for viewers.
  
• explain who the audience is for Cuffs
• explain how far the programme adapted conventions
  
• draw conclusions about how far the extract adapts the conventions of police drama to fit its scheduling and audience

Cuffs adapts its police drama conventions to fit its target audience before the BBC watershed by using censorship and obvious slapstick humour to distract from the subtle adult humour.

The conventions from most police TV drama include brutal fight scenes, often bloody bodies, and crude language and themes. Cuffs avoids and adapts this using light censorship to keep the implications of certain events, and to keep enough adult humour to appeal to their target audience without being too explicit for children. An example of this would be the scene of an 'implied' murder, as we hear and know the struggle of a fight and killing, but it is not explicitly shown on screen - therefore not exposing children to too much gore and explicit content. This is also done for a more light-hearted scene at the start of the episode - when a naked man pushes a young man's face close to his privates. Throughout the scene, no explicit nudity is shown on screen beside the occasional naked buttock, which not only harks childish 'butt joke' humour for younger audiences, but 'shields' them from the more adult humour in the scene.

Continually, the slapstick humour in this scene may also be appealing to younger audiences, as the characters fight in a chaotic disorder - which creates excitement in the ridiculousness of the content. By using slapstick humour, Cuffs adapts certain conventions of 'brutal fights' in usual conventions, and censors the subtle adult humour while doing so. For example, references to sexual humour being the scene where the arrested women makes facial gestures towards a policeman almost immediately after being detained by him, which creates a comical contrast between her previous distressed attitude and her now flirtatious, bold advance - most likely in hopes of 'pleasing' her way out of jail. This creates subtle sexual humour for more adult audiences, while being absurd enough in contrast to be laughable to younger audiences, without fully disclosing her likely intentions to young children. This also censors the convention in police drama of sexual humour and references - as it keeps the convention there, but vague enough so that it may be suitable for younger audiences before the BBC watershed, which appears usually before the average child's bedtime.

(not done)