Music Magazine: Photoshoot Planning and Analyzing

For my photoshoot for my music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread, I wanted to keep it simple yet interesting to appeal to my target market of young people who are interested in the indie/alternative music genre. I had to think about the lighting, mise-en-scene and angles I was going to use to generate the look of a music magazine.

I took inspiration from existing photos of musicians that have been developed and used for front covers and posters.

 I have noticed that a lot of photoshoots of bands aren't particularly posed, they seem to just be natural shots of them, similar to the photo shown above to the left of The Libertines. I like this idea as it gives a laid back yet often edgy outcome which can be tweaked with and worked to create something completely original like the poster on the right. I also like the idea of working around graffiti as it gives off an urban look which most indie/alternative bands or artists connote. I intend to carry out my photoshoot for my music magazine around my local area as to capture an urban feel with possibly some graffiti to add to originality.

















As well as the urban/edgy look, I also find the simplicity of plain backgrounds and a contrasting main image featuring mise-en-scene such as interesting costume and make-up to be very effective. For example, this iconic photo of David Bowie is very basic as it just features a mid-shot of Bowie with make-up designed to appear unique and stand out against the plain background. This shot has been used for many media related products, and it was also used by Q magazine. I think for my front cover I will use the idea of a plain or simple background so it is easier to place my masthead and cover-lines around the main image without causing too much of a distraction, making it uneasy to read.

Photoshoot

I wanted my model to have a slightly retro look about her as this would appeal to my target market, so I gave her the appropriate costume, hair and make-up to make her stand out in a subtle way.

 Overall I took over 100 photographs, after going through each of them and thinking about how I could work with them to create a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread, I ended up with a various selection. I had several ideas consisting of unique lighting (bottom left), plain backgrounds (top row) and interesting backgrounds (bottom right, second photo in). I really liked the idea of a sweet shop background to go with the prop of bubble gum, but the background was too chaotic and it would be impossible to place mastheads and cover-lines around it.

Eventually I decided on three photos to be used for my music magazine.

Each of these photos I feel are unique, simple, yet effective. I adjusted the lighting and colours using a free editing website (http://www.picmonkey.com/) to achieve the look I felt would suit the genre of an indie/alternative magazine. Each background will be easy to work with as they are not too complicated. I managed to include a small amount of graffiti which will be displayed as my contents page, this creates the edgy and urban look I wanted, I also used inspiration from the photo of David Bowie to take the photo for my double page spread, as I feel the sharpness yet simplicity stand out and will attract attention.